April 2013

UVA Today, U.Va. Students Get Creative with ‘Found Poetry’ April 29, 2013, by Anne Bromley

Little did University of Virginia fourth-year students Isabelle Conner and Victoria Kornick know when they played together in an Alexandria preschool that nearly two decades later, they would end up playing teachers for real, leading a poetry class in the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences.

Part of the Cavalier Education Instructor program, a Student Council initiative that gives undergraduates the opportunity to share their passion for and knowledge of subjects outside the traditional curriculum, the two-credit, pass/fail course often had students sitting at a long table strewn with magazines, newspaper pages, construction paper, scissors, glue sticks and markers, searching for poetic inspiration.

UVA Today, U.Va. Architecture Students Create ‘American Flag’ Art for Final Fridays April 24, 2013, by Robert Hull

Students in the U.Va. School of Architecture will present their work in a special exhibition and reception, “Painting the American Flag & Works on Paper,” on Friday.

The public event is part of Final Fridays, the monthly showcase of the arts at U.Va. highlighting exhibits, performances and lectures on the Betsy and John Casteen Arts Grounds.

The event will occur in Campbell Hall’s Elmaleh Gallery from 6 to 7 p.m., and will include a gallery talk with Sanda Iliescu, associate professor of art and architecture, and her students.

UVA Today, 2013 Virginia Film Festival Set for Nov. 7-10 April 23, 2013, by John Kelly

The Virginia Film Festival, presented by the University of Virginia, will return to Charlottesville for its 26th year from Nov. 7 to 10.

Festival director Jody Kielbasa – also U.Va.’s vice provost for the arts – and his team are currently at work organizing and planning for a successful festival this year.

“The spotlight is shining brighter than ever on the Virginia Film Festival,” Kielbasa said. “We look forward to building on the remarkable enthusiasm that surrounded our record-breaking anniversary year.”

UVA Today, U.Va. Music Scholar to Use National Humanities Center Fellowship to Study Ravel April 22, 2013, by Rob Seal

A University of Virginia music scholar will spend the next academic year working among a select group of humanities researchers at the National Humanities Center in Raleigh, N.C., the organization announced today.

Michael J. Puri, an associate professor in the McIntire Department of Music in U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences, is among 36 scholars selected from a pool of 433 applicants for a yearlong fellowship, according to the NHC. Puri said he’s looking forward to the fellowship, which runs during the 2013-14 academic year.

UVA Today, Poetry’s Insight at Your Fingertips in U.Va. Poet’s New Book April 19, 2013, by Anne Bromley

“We live in a time of rampant, mercurial self-portrayal,” writes English professor and poet Lisa Russ Spaar of the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences in her new book, “The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotations of Contemporary Poetry.”

“We can, if we wish, post, profile, tag, chat, friend, transform, lie, project, stalk, date, connect, complicate, simplify, vex, blog, tumble, pin, like and identify ourselves with dazzling velocity through a protean real-time landscape of social networks.”

UVA Today, Giant Moving Creatures To Invade U.Va. on Saturday April 17, 2013, by Robert Hull

A one-eyed “quadrapus” with 12-foot tentacles, a giant centipede named Winston, a “Treeture” that likes to eat people and more!

Unlocked and freed from the minds of University of Virginia studio art, drama and architecture students, these giant creatures will take over Grounds on Saturday as part of the Stan Winston Arts Festival of the Moving Creature. The parade at 2 p.m. and arts festival, to follow in Nameless Field at 3 p.m., is the culmination of a yearlong artistic project.

The event celebrates a new interdisciplinary course – funded by an Arts in Action grant and cross-listed in the School of Architecture and the College of Arts & Sciences’ drama and studio art departments – that has engaged a variety of students throughout the year in a collaborative workshop to research, design and construct large-scale kinetic monsters..

UVA Today, The Fralin Museum of Art at U.Va. to Host Weedon Lecture on Chinese Sculpture April 15, 2013, by Robert Hull

“Moving Buddha: The Discovery of Chinese Sculpture,” is the topic of an Ellen Bayard Weedon Lecture in the Arts of Asia. Stanley Abe of Duke University will give the free and public lecture, hosted by The Fralin Museum of Art, on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 158.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese sculpture was not considered to be fine art – in China or elsewhere in the world. Abe’s lecture will focus on how certain kinds of figural objects became valuable antiquities in China as well as fine art in Europe, the United States and Japan.

UVA Today, Klezmer Duo To Explore Eastern Europe’s Musical Melting Pot During U.Va. Residency April 11, 2013, by Rob Seal

A renowned pair of klezmer musicians will visit the University of Virginia this month for a residency that includes a free workshop, a colloquium and a concert featuring the McIntire Department of Music’s own Klezmer Ensemble.

Violinist Cookie Segelstein and accordionist Joshua Horowitz will visit the University April 21-25. Both musicians specialize in klezmer, a traditional Jewish music with roots in Eastern Europe that has seen a global resurgence in recent decades. The event is sponsored by the music department, the Jewish Studies Program and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, all in the College of Arts & Sciences.

UVA Today, U.Va. Drama Department Ends Season, Begins Era at State-of-the-Art Ruth Caplin Theatre April 10, 2013, by Robert Hull

The University of Virginia Department of Drama is set to close its 2012-13 season and celebrate the start of an exciting new era when the classic American screwball comedy “You Can’t Take It with You” opens the brand-new Ruth Caplin Theatre on April 18.

The latest addition to the Betsy and John Casteen Arts Grounds, the 300-seat facility is a “thrust-style” theater, extending the stage into the audience on three sides, creating a greater sense of intimacy between the performers and the audience. It is designed to accommodate growth across the University’s acclaimed performing arts programs.

UVA Today, U.Va. at Heart of Tom Tom Founders Festival, Starting Tomorrow April 9, 2013, by H. Brevy Cannon

The Tom Tom Founders Festival, a South-By-Southwest-inspired festival of innovation that starts Thursday, is being presented in partnership with the University of Virginia. Much of the festival has a U.Va. connection, including the kickoff and closing events.

The packed four days begin Thursday evening with a community business-plan pitch night, part of the official reopening of the W.L. Lyons Brown III Innovation Lab, or i.Lab, which has been expanded and renovated to better serve all 11 of the University’s schools along with the Charlottesville community.

UVA Today, Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra Concludes Season with Jazzy Clarinet, Music from ‘West Side Story’ April 8, 2013

The Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra concludes its 2012-13 “Let’s Dance!” season on April 20 at 8 p.m. at the University of Virginia’s Old Cabell Hall and April 21 at 3:30 p.m. at Monticello High School in Charlottesville.

Conducted by Music Director Kate Tamarkin, the program includes John Adams’ “The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra),” Aaron Copland’s “Clarinet Concerto,” Leonard Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances from ‘West Side Story’” and “Malambo from ‘Estancia: Four Dances’” by South American composer Alberto Ginastera.

UVA Today, U.Va. Dance Program’s Spring Concert to Showcase Original Works April 8, 2013, by Robert Hull

How does one navigate a faux pas? What is the nature of communication when the medium of expression is the body, poetry or visual art? How do we formulate our identities, and what forces shape this formulation?

These are just a few of the enigmatic questions explored in this year’s 2013 Spring Dance Concert, featuring original contemporary dance works by students, faculty and a guest artist choreographer.

The Dance Program in the College of Arts & Sciences’ Department of Drama will present its Spring Dance Concert in four shows: Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., and Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., all in the Helms Theatre.

UVA Today, Wayne Betts to Describe Making Films as a Deaf Person April 9 April 4, 2013, by Anne Bromley

What are the possibilities for communicating sound in film – without audio – when you’ve never heard any sound?

Wayne Betts Jr., an up-and-coming filmmaker, doesn’t consider that a limitation. He will give a talk on “Deaf Lens: Deaf Perspectives in Filmmaking” for the annual ASL/Deaf Culture Lecture at the University of Virginia on April 9 at 7 p.m. in Nau Auditorium.

The event, free and open to the public, is sponsored by U.Va.’s American Sign Language Program in the College of Arts & Sciences. Spoken English interpretation will be provided for hearing nonsigners.

UVA Today, Caribbean Theater Takes Center Stage at U.Va. Conference April 4, 2013, by Robert Hull

A melange of speech, song and dance that moved between scholarly and celebratory expression took place on Grounds this week.

The University of Virginia’s first-ever Caribbean Theater Conference brought together playwrights, storytellers, theater practitioners, scholars and students from Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti and France for roundtable discussions, staged readings and theater workshops, capped with an eclectic and exotic Caribbean theater performance.

Caribbean theater is unique in that many of the plays are not written down and published, and performances often take place in small theaters and are not well publicized.

UVA Today, ‘Ancient Songs, Modern Muses,’ Featuring Work by U.Va.’s Jasnow, Opens April 5 April 3, 2013, by Rebecca Arrington

Ancient Songs, Modern Muses” is a joint exhibition of art and poetry from London-based painter John Woodman and Charlottesville poet and classicist Ben Jasnow, a doctoral student in the University of Virginia’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

Woodman and Jasnow illustrate and translate the “Idylls” of Theocritus. Each original verse translation is paired with several of Woodman’s contemporary, interpretive illustrations. A talk and poetry reading will accompany the unveiling of the exhibit, “First Friday,” April 5, from 5:30-8 p.m. The show will run through April 26 at The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, located at 209 Monticello Road.

UVA Today, ‘Traces of the Hand’ Talk by Curator April 9 at U.Va.’s The Fralin Museum of Art April 3, 2013, by Robert Hull

Curator Lawrence Goedde will give a lunchtime talk on The Fralin Museum of Art’s exhibition, “Traces of the Hand: Master Drawings from the Collection of Frederick and Lucy S. Herman,” on April 9 from noon to 1 p.m.

Frederick and Lucy S. Herman spent over 50 years building an impressive collection of more than 250 works on paper, a majority of which they generously donated to the Fralin in 2006 and 2007.

“Traces of the Hand” displays a selection of drawings from this collection and celebrates the Hermans’ achievement as discriminating collectors. The drawings in the exhibit date from 1530 to 1945 and represent a variety of artistic periods.

March 2013

UVA Today, Free Bridge Quintet Presents ‘It Might As Well Be Spring’ Concert April 6 March 29, 2013, by Robert Hull

The Free Bridge Quintet, the faculty jazz quintet of the University of Virginia, presents its spring concert, “It Might As Well Be Spring,” on April 6 at 8 p.m. in Old Cabell Hall. The quintet will welcome the arrival of the new season, as well as the arrival of their newest member, Butch Taylor, who will make his debut as the group’s pianist.

The first half of the concert will feature some of the group’s favorite spring-themed jazz standards such as “Spring Is Here,” “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,” and “It Might As Well Be Spring.” The second half of the show will be a musical reunion of sorts between members of Free Bridge and their new pianist.

UVA Today, Francesca Fiorani Receives $80,000 Grant From the Samuel H. Kress Foundation March 29, 2013, by Sarah Wells

Francesca Fiorani, an art history professor in the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, will receive an $80,000 grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in support of the “Leonardo da Vinci and His Treatise on Painting” digital archive.

This is the project’s second grant from the Kress Foundation. The work will focus on creating comparative structures that can analyze Leonardo da Vinci’s original manuscripts on the theory and practice of art.

The archive documents da Vinci’s legacy on the science of art via his “Treatise on Painting,” a disorganized, fragmented and misleading text compiled by one of da Vinci’s pupils, but long considered an authoritative record of his thoughts.

UVA Today, U.Va.’s The Fralin Museum of Art To Host Weedon Asian Arts Lecture April 4 March 29, 2013, by Robert Hull

The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia will host Molly Aitken for an Ellen Bayard Weedon Lecture in the Arts of Asia on April 4. Her lecture, “Trajectories of Tradition: A Rajput Intervention,” which takes a closer look at how India’s court artists answered colonial-era challenges to their traditions, will be held at 6:30 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 158.

In the early 20th century, the Bengal School undertook to rejuvenate India’s painting traditions to create a national alternative to European-style oil painting. Histories of India’s modern art recount this episode, following an established trajectory that begins with British art institutions in India and the demise of the subcontinent’s artistic traditions.

UVA Today, French Department Conference Explores Sensory Experience in Literature and Film March 28, 2013, by Robert Hull

Since Aristotle wrote in “Metaphysics,” “Of all the senses, trust only the sense of sight,” vision has been the favored sense in Western cultures.

Recently, however, writers and scholars have been establishing interdisciplinary groundwork for new sensorial studies by opening intellectual thought to senses other than sight.

On Friday and Saturday, “Coming to Our Senses: Sensory Experience in Literature and Film,” sponsored by graduate students in the Department of French Language and Literature in the U.Va. College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, will explore films and works of literature that provoke the traditional five senses (hearing, smell, taste, touch and sight), as well as the range of other lesser-known senses such as balance, pain, orientation and intuition..

UVA Today, U.Va.’s Final Panel of ‘After the Deluge’ Architecture Symposium Features Artist Margaret Ross Tolbert March 26, 2013, by Robert Hull

Over the past 20 years, Margaret Ross Tolbert has created paintings, drawings and lithographs from studios in the United States, France and Turkey. Her commissions have included art projects with residencies in Turkey, Azerbaijan and Oman, allowing her to study and research the language and dance from the regions of the ancient trade routes as the subject of her art.

With her primary base in Gainesville, Fla., Tolbert’s other continuing focus remains the springs of North Florida, whose presence provides a warm sense of the ideal destination combined with the exotic that offers a real contrast to her paintings about journey and passage.

UVA Today, Students To Hone Skills in Documentary Filmmaking, French In New Course March 25, 2013, by Robert Hull

A University of Virginia professor will team up with a French documentarian and scholar for a new class this Summer Session that combines filmmaking and film study, and could conclude with students using their new documentary skills to help local nonprofits.

“Unbiased Camera: A Digital Documentary Workshop,” will meet May 13 to 31, and will be taught by Alison Levine, associate professor of French in the College of Arts & Sciences, and Jean-Luc Lioult, chair of documentary film studies at the Universite d’Aix -Marseille in France.

UVA Today, Arts Madness Week To Celebrate U.Va.’s Artistic Communities and Talents March 19, 2013, by Robert Hull

Arts Madness Week returns this spring for its second year with a new vision and increased enthusiasm. The mission of this student-led campaign is to increase accessibility and visibility of all the arts to all members of the University community, build bridges between arts groups and raise excitement for the arts on Grounds.

Sponsored by the U.Va. Student Council’s Student Arts Committee with the help of the University Programs Council, Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Eunoia and the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts, Arts Madness Week offers new and expanded events from Friday through March 30.

UVA Today, Book Lovers and Writers Converge at Virginia Festival of the Book March 17, 2013, by Anne Bromley

Reading and writing might be solitary activities, but not when the Virginia Festival of the Book arrives. University of Virginia faculty and alumni speak volumes each year at the festival, and 2013 is no exception.

Now in its 19th year, the festival opens Wednesday and features five days devoted to books, inside and out (and even in the virtual world), spotlighting authors who have employed their skills and imagination in writing transcendent poetry and heartbreaking prose. In their writing, they recreate worlds of the past or the future, overcome suffering and loss, and celebrate human rights and daily life.

UVA Today, Award-Winning Author Luc Sante to Speak on the Art of Photography on March 21 March 13, 2013, by Robert Hull

Author, critic and scholar Luc Sante will present a lecture on photography, “The Genius of the System,” on March 21 at the University of Virginia. Sante is currently a visiting professor of writing and art history at Bard College in New York.

Sante’s lecture, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 6 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 153. A reception and book signing will be held after the lecture at The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia.

A headline program for the Virginia Festival of the Book, the event is co-sponsored by the Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures, The Fralin Museum of Art and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

C-Ville, Tom Tom 2.0: Why UVA is investing in Charlottesville’s take on SXSW March 12, 2013, by Graelyn Brashear

Short, sweet, and smart. That’s what Paul Beyer wants the second annual Tom Tom Founders Festival to be, and the erstwhile City Council candidate has a powerful partner backing his vision.

The University of Virginia is providing brainpower, funding, and even an appearance by its own president to help fuel this year’s pared-down version of the April 11-14 event. A town-plus-gown approach to the city-wide celebration of local creativity held on Thomas Jefferson’s birthday has seen the focus change from a sprawling music fest to a more highly focused celebration of innovation in Charlottesville.

UVA Today, Innovative Film Explores African-American Life at U.Va. in the 1970s March 11, 2013, by Robert Hull

Students, faculty and other members of the University community filled the South Lawn Auditorium at Nau Hall Thursday to watch a black-and-white film, “Sugarcoated Arsenic.” In slightly more than 20 minutes, the film tells a remarkable story of African-American intellectual, social and political life at the University of Virginia in the 1970s.

“Sugarcoated Arsenic” was co-created by two College of Arts & Sciences faculty members, filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson, a professor in the McIntire Department of Art, and Claudrena Harold, an associate professor in the Corcoran Department of History and the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies. The film conveys its message through the words and legacy of the late Vivian Verdell Gordon, director of U.Va.’s black studies program between 1975 and 1980.

UVA Today, Big Heads: U.Va. Showcases Spanish Creators of Papier-mâché Festival Costumes March 8, 2013, by Robert Hull

In partnership with the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, the University of Virginia McIntire Department of Art’s Studio Art Program will host costume artists David Ventura and Neus Hosta from Navata, Spain March 18 through 22.

The husband-and-wife team are renowned makers of “gegant” (giant) and “capgrosso” (big heads), creative costume art designed for Catalonian festivals and street parades.

Megan Marlatt, an art professor in U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences, traveled to Spain to observe Ventura and Hosta at work in their studio, and sought to bring the couple to U.Va. to share their art with her students.

UVA Today, U.Va.’s Fralin Museum to Exhibit Jean Arp Sculpture Beginning March 25 March 8, 2013, by Robert Hull

“Oriforme,” a sculpture by the prominent abstract artist Jean Arp, will be on view on The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation Entrance Plaza in front of The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia beginning March 25.

The sculpture is on long-term loan from the National Gallery of Art.

Modeled in 1962 and fabricated in 1977, “Oriforme” exemplifies the approach to abstraction with which Arp is most closely associated. Arp’s style drew from the natural forms of animals, plants and human beings.

UVA Today, U.Va. Art Students Society Showcases First Juried Art Show at Ruffin March 5, 2013, by Robert Hull

The Art Students Society has curated its first exhibition of University of Virginia student artwork selected by a jury of faculty members. The winning submissions are on display through Friday in Ruffin Hall on the Betsy and John Casteen Arts Grounds.

A panel of faculty members selected 36 works from a record 178 submissions for the show. The faculty jurors were Howard Singerman, professor and chair of the McIntire Department of Art in the College of Arts & Sciences; George Sampson, research associate professor of arts administration and design thinking in the School of Architecture; and Jody Kielbasa, vice provost for the arts and director of the Virginia Film Festival.

February 2013

UVA Today, U.Va. Bringing World-Famous Pilobolus Dance Troupe to Culbreth February 27, 2013, by Ali Stoner

Thanks to the University of Virginia Arts Board, the shape-shifting Pilobolus Dance Theatre will lead a series of student workshops next week in conjunction with The Stan Winston Arts Festival of the Moving Creature.

The festival is an interdisciplinary project that engages architecture, studio art and drama students in yearlong collaborative workshops to research, design and construct “creatures” that will come to life April 20 in a celebratory experience.

UVA Today, Scholars to Discuss Interrelatedness of 18th-Century Arts, Literature, Languages and History February 22, 2013, by Anne Bromley

Down the long brick walkways leading to the Rotunda, past pavilions and student rooms on the Lawn, into gardens bordered by the serpentine walls, members of the University of Virginia community walk through history every day, thanks to Thomas Jefferson’s design of the Academical Village.

The 18th-century era, which produced the Enlightenment and spawned the emerging modern era, forms the intellectual core fundamental to American history, said the U.Va. organizers of an interdisciplinary symposium, “The 18th Centuries,” to be held March 1 and 2 in the auditorium of U.Va.’s Mary and David Harrison Institute for American History, Literature, and Culture/Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library and at Montalto, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s education center near Jefferson’s home at Monticello.

UVA Today, ‘Master of the Mountain’ Author Pays Tribute to Australian Artist Inspired by Jefferson February 19, 2013, by Robert Hull

Observing both President’s Day and Black History Month, Henry Wiencek – a scholar of Thomas Jefferson and author of the controversial book “Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves” – paid tribute Monday to the Australian artist Judy Watson and her “experimental beds” exhibit in a lecture at the auditorium of the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library.

“The inspiring evening that brought together Henry Wiencek’s insights with Judy Watson’s wonderful prints is what the collaborative enterprise of the library is all about,” said Hoke Perkins, director of the Mary and David Harrison Institute for American History, Literature, and Culture.

UVA Today, U.Va. Drama Department To Open Spring Season With ‘God’s Ear’ February 18, 2013, by Judy McPeak

Love, loss and language take center stage when the U.Va. Department of Drama’s production of “God’s Ear” opens Thursday in the Helms Theatre.

Playwright Jenny Schwartz’s recent work depicts the power of language to enlighten and obscure when a couple is unable to escape their grief following a tragedy.

UVA Today, Verbs and Vibes Poetry Jam Brings Poet Joshua Bennett to U.Va. February 18, 2013, by H. Brevy Cannon

As part of Black History Month at the University of Virginia, on Thursday at 7 p.m. in Newcomb Hall Ballroom the “Verbs & Vibes Open Mic and Poetry Jam” will feature special guest poet Joshua Bennett, a 24-year-old, award-winning performance poet from Yonkers, N.Y.

Bennett has recited his original poetry at the Sundance Film Festival, the NAACP Image Awards and the White House. He was featured in the HBO documentary series, “Russell Simmons Presents: Brave New Voices,” a national teen poetry competition that his “Team Philadelphia” won in 2007. He has performed alongside former U.S. poet laureates Billy Collins and Rita Dove, the latter an English professor in U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences.

UVA Today, African American Heritage Center Honors U.Va.’s Black History Month with Video Art Exhibit February 13, 2013, by Robert Hull

In conjunction with the University of Virginia’s celebration of Black History Month, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center in Charlottesville is presenting its inaugural exhibition, which will run through March 24.

“Civic Meditations” consists of three video installations by Jefferson Pinder, an acclaimed Washington, D.C.-based video artist: “Passive/Resistance” (2008), on view now through through Friday; “Afro Cosmonaut/Alien (White Noise)” (2008), which will be on view Saturday through March 1; and “Elevator Music” (2012), which will be on view March 2 through 24.

UVA Today, Special Collections Showcases Golden Age of Illustrations February 11, 2013, by Rob Seal

Illustrations, political cartoons, commercial art and caricatures from turn-of-the-century London and beyond are on display as part of a new exhibition at the University of Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.

“Drawn From Life: Collecting Cartoons and Caricatures,” runs through May 24 and primarily features artwork ranging from late 19th century through World War I, though it includes some art dating from as far back as the Civil War. The exhibition is free and open to the public during business hours on the first floor of the Harrison Institute and Small Special Collections Library..

UVA Today, Spend an Evening with Poet Nikki Giovanni Feb. 13 February 7, 2013, by Anne Bromley

As part of the University of Virginia’s Black History Month celebration, acclaimed poet and activist Nikki Giovanni will give a talk, free and open to the public, on “The Politics of Love, Defining the Need for Student Activism.” The talk will be held Wednesday at 6 p.m. in Newcomb Theater.

After her talk, she will sign books in the theater lobby.

UVA Today, U.Va. Architecture School to Host Woltz Symposium on Urban Metabolism February 7, 2013, by Robert Hull

The University of Virginia School of Architecture will host the 2013 John E. Woltz Symposium, “QuasiObjects/WorldObjects/HyperObjects: New Classifications for the Urban Metabolism” this weekend at Campbell Hall.

Scott Lash, a project leader in the Goldsmiths Media Research Programme at the University of London, will give the public keynote address, “Forms and Life and the Theory of the Object: Elements of Urban Metabolism,” on Friday at 5 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 153. Lash’s recent books include “Critique of Information” (2002), “Global Culture Industry” (2007) and “Intensive Culture” (2010).

UVA Today, U.Va. Music Professor’s Telematic Opera, ‘Auksalaq,’ Makes Its World Premiere February 1, 2013, by Sarah O'Halloran

Following a postponement last fall due to Hurricane Sandy, the University of Virginia will host a reprise of “Auksalaq: A Telematic Opera,” an award-winning composition that uses networking technology to link performers and audiences around the world, on Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. at OpenGrounds.

FThe opera, by Matthew Burtner, an associate professor of music in U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences, and media artist Scott Deal, links performers and audience members in different cities using advanced telematic technology, which allows performers to collaborate via the Internet in real time.

January 2013

UVA Today, Kielbasa Appointed U.Va. Vice Provost for the Arts; Will Continue to Lead Film Festival January 31, 2013, by Robert Hull

Jody Kielbasa, who has led the Virginia Film Festival to record-breaking heights over the past four years as its director, will take on new duties as the vice provost for the arts at the University of Virginia, Executive Vice President and Provost John D. Simon announced.

During his five-year term as vice provost, Kielbasa will continue to serve as director of the Virginia Film Festival.

“Jody will participate in planning for the arts in consultation with the Arts Advisory Committee, will participate in fundraising initiatives associated with the arts, and will be responsible for initiating and coordinating cross-disciplinary collaborations for the arts at the University,” Simon said.

Cavalier Daily, Va. Film Festival director named University vice provost for the arts January 30, 2013, by Alia Sharif

Jody Kielbasa, the Virginia Film Festival director, will serve as the University’s new vice provost for the arts. John Simon, executive vice president and provost, announced the appointment nearly four months after former Vice Provost Elizabeth Turner said she planned to step down from her post in the new year.

As vice provost, Kielbasa will serve as Simon’s chief advisor and advocate for University arts programs. His responsibilities will include planning with the Arts Advisory Committee, conducting arts fundraising initiatives, and initiating and coordinating cross-disciplinary arts related collaborations at the University, according to a University press release. He will also oversee the Fralin Museum of Art and the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection.

The Daily Progress, Kielbasa named UVa's vice provost for the arts January 30, 2013

Jody Kielbasa, director of the Virginia Film Festival, will become the vice provost for the arts at the University of Virginia.

Kielbasa will be appointed for a five-year term, and will continue to serve as director of the film festival.

As vice provost, Kielbasa will serve as Simon’s chief advisor and advocate for University arts programs. His responsibilities will include planning with the Arts Advisory Committee, conducting arts fundraising initiatives, and initiating and coordinating cross-disciplinary arts related collaborations at the University, according to a University press release. He will also oversee the Fralin Museum of Art and the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection.

UVA Today, Charles Wright Wins $150,000 Bollingen Prize for His Poetry January 27, 2013, by Anne E. Bromley

Charles Wright, professor emeritus of the English department’s Creative Writing Program in the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, has won the 2013 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry. Wright taught at U.Va. for almost 30 years, retiring in 2011, and is one of America’s most celebrated poets.

The Bollingen Prize in American Poetry is among the most prestigious prizes given to American writers. Established by Paul Mellon in 1949, it is awarded biennially by the Yale University Library to an American poet for the best book published during the previous two years or for lifetime achievement in poetry. The prize includes a cash award of $150,000.

UVA Today, ‘Becoming the Butterfly: Landscapes of James McNeill Whistler’ Opens Jan. 25 at The Fralin Museum of Art January 24, 2013, by Jane Ford

Best known for his 1871 painting “Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1” – also called “Portrait of the Artist's Mother” – and his well-publicized legal battle with the English art critic John Ruskin, the 19th-century American artist James McNeill Whistler often garners as much attention for his flamboyant personality as for his artistic production.

Yet a look at the artist’s early landscapes and portraits demonstrates a different side: the development of his search for his artistic vision.

UVA Today, Fralin Museum of Art at U.Va. Opens ‘STrAY: Found Poems from a Lost Time,’ an Installation by Contemporary Artist Suzanne McClelland, on Jan. 25 January 23, 2013, by Jane Ford

The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia will feature work by the contemporary artist Suzanne McClelland in “STrAY: Found Poems from a Lost Time,” an exhibition opening Jan. 25 and running through May 26.

“STrAY: Found Poems from a Lost Time” is an in situ project in which McClelland responds to “Found Poems from a Lost Time: A Short History of the Civil War,” 12 epistolary poems published in 2006 by the late George Garrett, the renowned poet and former professor of creative writing at U.Va. The poems, which describe the physical and psychological horrors of war, are constructed from passages lifted from letters written by two soldiers – both Garrett’s distant relatives – who fought on opposite sides during the American Civil War.

UVA Today, Architecture School’s Rivanna Design Competition Sparks Innovative Ideas January 22, 2013, by Robert Hull & Jenny Abel

IWater covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, and our bodies are roughly 60 percent water.

Acknowledging water’s omnipresence, students and faculty at the University of Virginia School of Architecture have focused this year on the idea of water through coursework, lectures and research.

Last week, as a part of an ambitious weeklong design workshop, nearly 400 U.Va. architecture students, from second-year undergraduates to the master’s graduating class, gathered from all four of the school’s disciplines – architecture, landscape architecture, urban and environmental planning and architectural history – to explore the subject of water – specifically, the Rivanna River.

UVA Today, ‘Traces of the Hand: Master Drawings from the Collection of Frederick and Lucy S. Herman’ Opens Jan. 25 at The Fralin Museum of Art at U.Va. January 22, 2013, by Jane Ford

Avid collectors since their college days, Frederick and Lucy S. Herman spent more than 50 years building an impressive collection of more than 250 works on paper, which they generously donated to The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia in 2006 and 2007 for the instruction of its students.

The museum’s exhibition, “Traces of the Hand: Master Drawings from the Collection of Frederick and Lucy S. Herman,” features a selection of drawings from this collection. The exhibition opens Jan. 25 and runs through May 26.

UVA Today, The Fralin Museum at U.Va. Highlights Drawings in ‘Corot to Cézanne’ Exhibition, Opening Jan. 25 January 17, 2013, by Robert Hull

The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia will feature works from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the traveling exhibition “Corot to Cézanne: French Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.” The exhibition opens Jan. 25 and runs through June 2.

The Mellons’ gifts to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts include not only the sporting art and other French, British and American paintings and sculptures on permanent display, but also more than 1,000 prints and drawings. “‘Corot to Cézanne’ represents a noteworthy opportunity to see these works together; normally, because of their natural fragility, these drawings can only be shown on a rotating basis,” said Bruce Boucher, director of The Fralin Museum of Art and the exhibition’s curator.

UVA Today, Second Annual University of Virginia Chamber Music Festival to Kick Off Feb. 1 January 17, 2013, by Rob Seal

The 2013 Chamber Music Festival, which offers listeners the opportunity to hear top chamber music performers from the University of Virginia faculty, begins Feb. 1.

Hosted by the McIntire Department of Music of the College of Arts & Sciences, the festival features performances by the Rivanna String Quartet and the Albemarle Ensemble, and faculty recitals for clarinet and bassoon, and for trumpet and violin. Several guests will also perform.

UVA Today, U.Va.’s Ruffin Gallery Explores Science Fiction Through Video Art in ‘Terrestrial Transmissions’ Exhibition January 15, 2013, by Robert Hull

The attempt to communicate with the “alien other” through technological or telepathic means is at the core of a group exhibition on “Terrestrial Transmissions,” being presented by the McIntire Department of Art in the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences. It will be on display in Ruffin Hall Gallery from Jan. 25 through Feb. 22.

The work in “Terrestrial Transmissions” explores science fiction through the lens of video art, using the devices of both to critique and play with notions of gender.

UVA Today, Winners Announced for The Fralin Museum's 2012 Writer's Eye Competition January 15, 2013, by Robert Hull

The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia has selected the winners of Writers Eye 2012, an annual program that challenges writers of all ages to use visual art as inspiration for the creation of original poetry and prose.

Contestants submitted original writings inspired by one of 15 pieces selected for the competition from the museum's permanent collection and visiting exhibitions. After conducting tours for more 3,000 students and adults, the museum received nearly 1,400 entries.

UVA Today, Two U.Va. Faculty Collaborative Teams Awarded Annual Arts in Action Project Grants January 13, 2013, by Robert Hull

“Design Driven Manufacturing: Place and Product” and “Being In Time” are the titles of the two projects for which the University of Virginia’s Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts has awarded the second Arts in Action Project Grants. These grants provide funding for an annual collaborative project for two teams of faculty artists.

“Arts in Action on Grounds” is a public arts initiative at U.Va. that brings artists who have achieved excellence in their fields an opportunity to engage students and faculty in arts-based research and to support the development of an arts-informed curriculum.

UVA Today, J-Term Course Explores the Art of Dress Through U.Va. Historic Collection January 8, 2013, by Robert Hull

Why do so many men wear khakis and blue blazers?

According to Gweneth West, professor and head of costume design in the Department of Drama of the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, the style is rooted in a tradition established by “Beau” Brummel, an arbiter of men’s fashion in the early 19th century.

UVA Today, Flowerdew Hundred Exhibit Showcases Scholarly Wealth, Potential of Historical Virginia Site
January 3, 2013, by Hoke Perkins

A free exhibit at the University of Virginia evokes centuries of Virginia history through artifacts and other items related to Flowerdew Hundred, a property on the James River that is yielding a trove of information about an early colonial settlement and those who came before and after it.

The exhibit, “Layers of the Past: Discoveries at Flowerdew Hundred,” is open to the public during business hours through July in the main gallery of the Mary and David Harrison Institute for American History, Literature, and Culture.

December 2012

UVA Today, Jefferson’s Drawings and Monticello Inspire Work of Australian Artist December 21, 2012, by Robert Hull

In 2009, on a visit to the University of Virginia, Australian artist Judy Watson saw the exhibit “Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village: The Creation of an Architectural Experience,” curated by Richard Guy Wilson, professor of architectural history.

It was a transforming experience for her – and her art.

The fruits of that experience are currently on exhibition in the South Gallery of the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library. The exhibition of six prints, “experimental beds,” is on view through May 11.

UVA Today, Good Medicine: Music Professor, Symphony Director Takes Talents to Patients’ Bedsides December 18, 2012, by Rob Seal

Kate Tamarkin has enjoyed a long and successful career as a symphony conductor, musician and teacher, but one of her most fulfilling musical moments came in an unlikely place: the pediatric unit at a local hospital.

Her audience in this case was a baby who had been born prematurely, and Tamarkin’s role wasn’t as a conductor or professor, but as a therapeutic musician playing the Celtic harp. “As I was playing, the nurse brought other nurses in to look, because the baby’s blood pressure was going down and her oxygenation level was going up,” Tamarkin recalled. “The nurse was pointing at the monitors and saying ‘Look, the music is helping this to happen.’”

UVA Today, New Music Release Features the Work of Walter Ross, Music Professor Emeritus December 18, 2012, by Robert Hull

Walter Ross, professor emeritus of music composition and theory in the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, has more than 150 works to his credit.

With the release this fall of the CD and download “Through the Reeds,” some of those compositions can now be heard by a wider audience.

Released by Ravello and distributed through the classical label Naxos, “Through the Reeds” consists of woodwind concerti, including the compositions “Oboe D’Amore Concerto,” “Concerto for Bassoon and String Orchestra,” “Concerto for Flute and Guitar” and “Concerto for Oboe, Harp and String Orchestra.”

UVA Today, U.Va. Grad Student Mixes Media and Traditions with ‘Strange Tales’ December 11, 2012, by Melissa Maki

TJoe Adkins is a man of many influences and talents. A University of Virginia doctoral candidate in the McIntire Department of Music’s Composition and Computing Technologies program, his latest multimedia work is a juxtaposition of literary and nonliterary, classical music and rural musical tradition.

Adkins recently launched a crowd-sourced funding campaign through Kickstarter to produce a soundtrack recording for “Pammanottus,” the first in his series, “Strange Tales from Appalachia,” which will feature narrator and chamber ensemble. The campaign runs through Saturday.

UVA Today, Arts & Sciences’ Report Showcases Its Work of Late and Where It’s Headed December 10, 2012, by Dan Heuchert

The University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences has published a major multimedia presentation called “Thesis: A Report from Arts & Sciences.”

The online report offers an in-depth look at a few of the major activities and initiatives in the College in recent years and the changes taking place today that will shape its future direction, according to an introductory email from Dean Meredith Jung-en Woo.

UVA Today, Mead Grant Allows U.Va. Drama Students to Take Their Show on the Road December 10, 2012, by Robert Hull

For H. Caitlin McLeod, a production coordinator and assistant professor in stage management in the Department of Drama of the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, a dream has come true. This fall, she received a Mead Endowment grant to create a “dream idea” project with her students.

The Mead Endowment was created in honor of U.Va. music professor emeritus Ernest “Boots” Mead to celebrate the University’s tradition of close student-faculty personal interactions. It allows faculty members to undertake interesting projects with undergraduate students that they might otherwise have been unable to pursue.

November 2012

UVA Today, U.Va. Faculty Members, Alumnus Have Hand in Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln’ November 29, 2012, by Jane Ford

Working on a Hollywood film with director Steven Spielberg is a dream for veteran screen actors and those who work behind the scenes to bring the story to life.

When Spielberg selected Richmond and two other Virginia locations to film “Lincoln,” his biopic about the 16th president and his efforts to secure passage of the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution that officially abolished slavery, it opened the door for two University of Virginia faculty members to contribute to the production.

UVA Today, U.Va. Music Department To Finish Semester in a Blaze of Concerts November 28, 2012, by Rob Seal

The McIntire Department of Music in the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences will present several concerts in early December, ranging from long-standing traditions such as the Messiah Sing-In to chamber music and Klezmer performances.

The concerts include:

The Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra and the University Singers will continue a festive community tradition by presenting the eighth annual Family Holiday Concerts on Dec. 1 and 2.

UVA Today, Old Cabell Hall Mural Expands to Encompass a Lifetime of Learning November 27, 2012, by Jane Ford

Over the past 16 years, artist Lincoln Perry has created a visual allegory representing education through the depiction of triumphs and setbacks, the cycle of generations and the relation between culture and nature. Perry began painting the mural, located in the lobby of the University of Virginia’s Old Cabell Hall and titled “The Student’s Progress,” in 1996.

He completed the first 11 panels in 2000. The narrative depicts a student, “Shannon,” as she enters the University, follows her through a journey of self-discovery in her pursuit of knowledge and concludes with her graduation.

UVA Today, ‘Spring Awakening’ Opens Newly Renovated Culbreth Theatre on Nov. 29 November 20, 2012, by John Kelly

The 2012-13 University of Virginia Drama season will continue with the international musical theater sensation “Spring Awakening,” which opens Nov. 29 in the newly renovated Culbreth Theatre.

Taking Broadway by storm in 2007, this pop/rock/folk adaptation of an 1892 play by Frank Wedekind follows the lives, loves and longing of a group of German teens exploring and embracing their emerging sexuality under the disapproving eyes of their repressive parents, and society at large. The show captured eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and features an infectious score by Grammy Award-winning artist and composer Duncan Sheik.

Directed by Robert Chapel, a drama professor in U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences, “Spring Awakening” will be presented Nov. 29-30, Dec. 1 and Dec. 5-8 at 8 p.m.

C-Ville, UVA students team up with Hollywood designers for first ever ‘creature’ course November 13, 2012, by Laura Ingles

While most UVA students were finishing up homework at 8:30 last Wednesday night, 25 architecture, art, and drama majors were covered head to toe in sawdust and coming up on their 13th consecutive hour in the drama studio on Culbreth Road. Last week, as part of a new course offering called Art of the Moving Creature, students and teachers spent three straight days in an intensive workshop, sawing, sculpting, welding, gluing, and painting with the team that made Jurassic Park come to life. Hollywood crew Matt Winston, Shannon Shea, Ted Haines, and John Ales flew out from Los Angeles to help the class build a 12′ tall, 25′ long creature that made its debut on Grounds last Thursday.

UVA Today, The Story of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ Spread from Novel to Theater and Screen November 12, 2012, by Jane Ford

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly,” with its theme of the immorality of slavery, was the best-selling novel of the 19th century. The only book that sold more copies in the U.S. was the Bible.

In his new book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the American Stage and Screen,” drama professor and theater historian John Frick of the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences chronicles how Stowe’s novel was adapted to theater and film – and details how, by the beginning of the 20th century, more than 400 separate companies traveled and performed some theatrical version of the story.

Newsplex.com, UVa Students Create and Parade Creature Around Grounds November 8, 2012

A creature paraded around the Lawn, invaded marching band practice, and posed at Poe's room, all in order to teach UVa students.

A group of UVa students spent three days designing and building the creature. Thursday night, they marched it around grounds and the surrounding streets. They were part of a hands-on workshop put on by the Stan Winston School of Character Arts, based in Hollywood.

UVA Today, Film Festival Sets Records for Box Office, Attendance and Sold-Out Screenings November 8, 2012, by John Kelly

The 25th Anniversary Virginia Film Festival started off by celebrating its history, and finished off by making some of its own.

Festival officials announced Thursday that the 2012 event, held Nov. 1-4, shattered all previous records for box office sales, attendance and sold-out screenings. Box office sales this year came in at $108,043 – a 20 percent increase over its previous record of $90,077, set in 2010. This year’s festival drew 27,299 attendees, topping the previous all-time record of 24,077, set in 2011. Finally, this year’s festival featured 42 sold out-screenings, up from 27 last year.

UVA Today, U.Va.’s Dance Program to Present Fall Experimental Dance Concert Nov. 15-17 November 8, 2012, by Kim Brooks Mata

The Dance Program in the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences will present its annual Fall Experimental Dance Concert Nov. 15 through 17 at 8 p.m. in the Helms Theatre.

Tickets can be purchased online at the U.Va. Arts Box Office, by calling 434-924-3376 or in person in the lobby of the U.Va. Drama Building. Tickets are $10 ($5 for U.Va. students, children, faculty, staff and Alumni Association members).

Featuring original contemporary dance works by student and faculty choreographers, the concert reflects the collaborative spirit of this expressive art form through dance, music and film, and challenges U.Va.’s student dancers in innovative and exciting ways, said Kim Brooks Mata, who directs the Dance Program.

UVA Today, U.Va. Architecture Student Wins Sketch Design Competition, Earns Internship November 7, 2012, by Jane Ford

Victor Hugo De Souza Azevedo, a fourth-year student in the University of Virginia School of Architecture, won the recent Student Design Sketch Competition held by BLT Architects in Philadelphia. In recognition of the award, announced Nov. 3, the firm offered De Souza Azevedo a paid internship next summer, which he accepted.

Michael Ytterberg, principal at BLT, said, “Picking one winning design from the submissions we received was a challenging affair that spurred spirited conversation among our team here in the office. We were unified in our point-of-view that the quality of work that was exemplified by all the students is a testament to not only their skills and work ethic, but also of the quality of today's architecture schools.”

UVA Today, The Fralin Museum of Art Hosts Lunchtime Talk on Berenice Abbott Exhibition Nov. 13 November 5, 2012, by Jane Ford

Stephen Margulies will give a Lunchtime Talk on The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia’s new exhibition, “Making Science Visible: The Photography of Berenice Abbott” on Nov. 13, from noon to 1 p.m.

This exhibition explores the photography of Abbott (1898-1991) and its use in both scientific and artistic contexts. It features works from The Fralin Museum of Art’s collection of Abbott’s original photographs, including images reproduced in science texts, and investigates the impact of her work not only in art, but also in science, documentaries and the history of science education.

UVA Today, U.Va. Architecture Professor Elected to U.S. Green Building Council Board of Directors November 5, 2012, by Jane Ford

Associate professor John Quale, director of the graduate architecture program in the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture and an expert in sustainable building research and practice, has been elected to a three-year term on the U.S. Green Building Council’s Board of Directors, filling a slot reserved for post-secondary educators.

According to the non-profit organization’s website, the U.S. Green Building Council is committed to a prosperous and sustainable future through cost-efficient and energy-saving green buildings. The council works toward its mission of market transformation through its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, green building program, educational offerings, a nationwide network of chapters and affiliates, an annual conference and expo, and advocacy in support of public policy that encourages and enables green buildings and communities.

UVA Today, The Fralin Museum of Art Family Program Explores Still Life Painting November 5, 2012, by Jane Ford

Families are invited to an afternoon of fun and hands-on creativity as The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia continues its monthly children’s program, the Family Art JAM. On Nov. 17 and 18, the museum will offer four sessions of “Abstraction and Reality According to Hélion” for children ages 5 to 12.

Family Art JAMs combine age-appropriate tours with hands-on art projects planned to make the museum's exhibitions accessible to young children.

UVA Today, Kluge-Ruhe Collection to Hold FLASH Party and Art Auction on Nov. 14 November 5, 2012, by Lauren Maupin

The University of Virginia’s Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection will host “FLASH,” a party and art auction to fund the conservation of artworks in the museum’s permanent collection, on Nov. 14 from 6:30 to 9 p.m.

The auction catalog features both affordable works, some with starting bids as low as $50, and collectable works by Australian Aboriginal artists such as Judy Watson and Shorty Jangala Robertson. Artworks in a variety of media are available, from canvas and paper to bark, glass, and even a didgeridoo. The auction also boasts three “mystery baskets,” as well as a number of local services centered on the theme of conservation.

UVA Today, Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra To Perform Bruch Concerto With Violinist Shannon Lee November 1, 2012, by Janet Kaltenbach

The Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra continues its 2012-13 season on Nov. 17 at 8 p.m. in Old Cabell Hall at the University of Virginia, and on Nov. 18 at 3:30 p.m. at Monticello High School in Charlottesville.

Conducted by music director Kate Tamarkin, the concerts include Avner Dorman’s “Azerbaijani Dance,” Max Bruch’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 1 in G minor and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.

October 2012

UVA Today, Japan Film Festival to Begin Tuesday October 31, 2012, by Rob Seal

The University of Virginia will screen a series of Japanese films as part of a new weekly film festival hosted by U.Va.’s East Asia Center and Asia Institute, as well as the nonprofit Japan Foundation.

The 2012 Japan Film Festival kicks off on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Newcomb Hall Theater with the 2005 Uchida Kenji film, “A Stranger of Mine.” The film screenings will continue at the same time each Tuesday through Dec. 4, and are free and open to the public.

UVA Today, Silver Anniversary Virginia Film Festival Starts Today October 29, 2012, by Jane Ford

The Virginia Film Festival, produced by the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, will celebrate its 25th anniversary Thursday through Sunday in Charlottesville with a slate of more than 100 films and a roster of special guests representing the worlds of film, politics and popular culture.

The festival kicks off Thursday with a screening of “Sopranos” creator David Chase’s highly anticipated film, “Not Fade Away.” The film – chosen as the centerpiece film of the New York Film Festival – is produced by Academy Award-winning producer Mark Johnson (a 1971 U.Va. alumnus) and stars James Gandolfini.

UVA Today, Architecture Course Focuses on Integrating Eastern, Western Health Perspectives October 30, 2012, by Jane Ford

With the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west and the ridges of the Southwest Mountains in view, University of Virginia Architecture School students scattered over the landscape at Westover, an almost 325-acre property located off Old Garth Road near the U.S. 250 Bypass and owned by the UVA Foundation. They sketched, took pictures and walked the land as part of their research to design a Center for Integrated Medicine and Well-Being that blends health perspectives from the East and West. The exercise is to explore the design for a collaborative, integrated facility.

The 28 third- and fourth-year students in a design research studio, led by architecture professors Schaeffer Somers and Peter Waldman, are devoting eight weeks to the design initiative. One of the school’s research themes addresses how buildings, landscape and community design impact health.

UVA Today, The Fralin Museum of Art Joins American Association of Art Museum Directors October 29, 2012, by Jane Ford

Bruce Boucher, director of The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia has been invited to join the American Association of Art Museum Directors. Membership honors directors and their institutions’ accomplishments and contributions to society.

The association’s mission is to serve as a forum for the exchange of information and the exploration of ideas, and as a voice with which museum directors may express their joint concerns and those of their institutions and maintain the highest standards of professional practice. It advocates for members and supports leadership in shaping public discourse about the arts community and the role of art in society.

UVA Today, Rare Book School at U.Va. Creates New Mellon-Funded Fellowship to Train Humanities Scholars in the Study of the Book October 29, 2012, by Rob Seal

A new fellowship program of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia will train an emerging generation of humanities scholars in the study of the book.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation recently awarded Rare Book School an $896,000 grant to fund The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography program, which will supply 20 three-year fellowships for junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows or doctoral students in the humanities interested in bibliographical studies.

UVA Today, U.Va. Art History Students Explore New Narratives in the History of Modernism at the Phillips Collection October 26, 2012, by Jane Ford

Each Friday, University of Virginia art history students – three graduate students and an undergraduate in the College of Arts & Sciences – travel to Washington, D.C. to spend the afternoon at the Phillips Collection. There, they are responsible for an evolving installation in the Main Gallery, founder Duncan Phillips’ original exhibition space.

During the course of the semester, the students rearrange and swap out artworks based on their research and analysis of American modernism.

Professor Elizabeth Hutton Turner, who was senior curator at the Phillips before joining U.Va.’s McIntire Department of Art in August 2007, preselected the works for the installation based on a 1927 photo of the space in order to immerse the class in Duncan Phillips’ perspective of modernism. The first time the course met at the Phillips was just as the works were being installed.

UVA Today, U.Va. Art Historian Receives Library of Virginia Literary Award October 23, 2012, by Jane Ford

University of Virginia art history professor Maurie McInnis received the Library of Virginia’s 2012 Literary Award for Nonfiction for her book, “Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade,” published in 2011 by the University of Chicago Press.

The award was presented Saturday at the 15th Annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards celebration in Richmond.

Two U.Va. alumni were also honored: David Huddle received the 2012 Emyl Jenkins Sexton Literary Award for Fiction for “Nothing Can Make Me Do This,” and David Baldacci won a “People’s Choice Award” in the fiction category for his novel, “The Sixth Man.”

UVA Today, U.Va. Fourth-Year Art Show to Open Oct. 30 at McGuffey Art Center October 23, 2012, by Jane Ford

Fourth-year University of Virginia students in the studio art program of the College of Arts & Sciences’ McIntire Department of Art will present their work in a special exhibition, “Another One Opens,” at Charlottesville’s McGuffey Art Center from Oct. 30 through Nov. 18.

An opening reception on Nov. 2, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., will be part of the First Friday art celebration held monthly in galleries on the Downtown Mall and adjacent venues. The event is free and open to the public.

UVA Today, U.Va. Music Professor’s Telematic Opera, ‘Auksalaq,’ Makes Its World Premiere October 22, 2012, by Sarah O'Halloran

The University of Virginia will host part of the world premiere of “Auksalaq: A Telematic Opera,” an award-winning piece that uses networking technology to link performers and audiences around the world, on Oct. 29 at 5 p.m. in two locations on Grounds.

The opera, by U.Va. associate music professor Matthew Burtner and media artist Scott Deal, involves performers and audience members in the District of Columbia, Norway, Montreal, Alaska, New York, Charlottesville and Indianapolis. The stages are connected through advanced telematic technology, which allows performers to collaborate via the Internet in real time.

UVA Today, Hybrid Acting Course Challenges Teachers and Students October 18, 2012, by Jane Ford

The 144 University of Virginia aspiring actors enrolled in a dozen sections of an introductory drama course are exploring new ways of teaching and learning, thanks to a 2012 Hybrid Challenge Grant.

Students and their instructors in Acting I are interacting online and accessing digital resources to improve both the teaching and the classroom learning experience.

Colleen Kelly, a drama professor in the College of Arts & Sciences, was one of 10 professors awarded $10,000 this fall, funded by U.Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan, to convert a class to a “hybrid” model, incorporating the use of digital technology with classroom time.

UVA Today, Progressive Performance Event on Nov. 2 Will Celebrate the Arts at U.Va. October 17, 2012, by Jane Ford

The College of Arts & Sciences will celebrate creativity in the arts at the University of Virginia with a special Progressive Performance on Nov. 2, a program of collaborative events that will include music, drama, dance, visual arts, film, poetry and prose.

All events are free and open to the public, but registration is requested as events are on a first-come, first-served basis. To register, click here. Reservations close Nov. 1.

“This event celebrates the essential role of the arts in the life of the College and University,” said Meredith Jung-en Woo, Buckner W. Clay Dean of Arts & Sciences. “The arts not only infuse the student experience with creativity and innovation, they also enrich and broaden the scope of research and thinking in all academic disciplines.”

UVA Today, Virginia Film Festival Rounds Out 25th-Anniversary Program with Five Major Releases October 10, 2012, by John Kelly

The Virginia Film Festival announced today that it is adding five highly anticipated films to its 25th-anniversary program, putting an exclamation point on a remarkable collection of more than 120 films to be presented from Nov. 1-4 in Charlottesville.

The Virginia Film Festival is presented by the University of Virginia’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

Festival director Jody Kielbasa announced that the David O. Russell film, “Silver Linings Playbook,” will be this year’s centerpiece film, with a 7 p.m. screening on Nov. 3 in the Paramount Theater. Bradley Cooper and Academy Award-winner Jennifer Lawrence head a cast that also includes Robert DeNiro and Julia Stiles in the story of a man whose efforts to rebuild his life after losing everything are complicated by a relationship with a mysterious girl who has problems of her own. The deal they strike forms the basis of an unexpected bond that pays important dividends in both of their lives.

UVA Today, New York Artist Margaret McCann’s Work on View in Ruffin Gallery Starting Oct. 26 October 8, 2012, by Jane Ford

The University of Virginia’s McIntire Department of Art presents a solo exhibition by New York painter Margaret McCann, titled “From Rome to Atlantic City,” in Ruffin Hall Gallery from Oct. 26 to Dec 7.

The opening reception for the exhibit will be on “Final Friday,” Oct. 26, at 5:30 p.m.

The artist will give a lecture about her work on Oct. 29 at 5:30 p.m., in Campbell Hall, room 158

UVA Today Blog, Film Festival Takes to Small Screen To Tell Its Story October 5, 2012, by Dan

Earlier this week, UVA Today posted a story previewing the 25th anniversary Virginia Film Festival, which runs Nov. 1 through 4.

If you want to learn more about the festival and its history, you can catch a half-hour television special produced by the Charlottesville Newsplex in cooperation with the Charlottesville-Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau.

UVA Today, U.Va. Fralin Museum of Art Offers Lecture on French Artist, Followed by Q&A with His Widow October 3, 2012

Painter and art critic Deborah Rosenthal will give a special lecture in conjunction with The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia’s exhibition, "Jean Hélion: Reality and Abstraction," on view through Dec. 16. She will speak on “The Artist in Society: Jean Hélion, painter, writer, prisoner” on Oct. 11 at 6:30 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 153.

In the 1930s, Hélion helped found the international artists' group called “Abstraction-Création” in Paris, participated in many important exhibitions in Europe, and forged connections between modern art circles in France and the United States. Between 1936 and 1939, Hélion lived and worked mainly in New York City and Rockbridge Baths, VA. Just as his work was evolving toward a figurative style and everyday themes, Hélion became caught up in World War II, said exhibition curator Matthew Affron, an art history professor in U.Va.’s College of Arts & Scien

UVA Today, Library Offers New Trove of 3-D Digital Tools October 3, 2012, by H. Breny Cannon

The winged “Aviator” statue outside of the University of Virginia’s Clemons Library has taken flight into cyberspace, and soon may fly through the scenes of a student film, or land on a nearby desk, thanks to a suite of new state-of-the-art digital tools at the library’s Robertson Media Center.

The new tools were acquired over the summer as part of an $815,000 Teaching and Learning Spaces Award funded in last year’s university budget.

UVA Today, Free Concert, Residency to Bring Balkan Wedding Music to Old Cabell Hall October 2, 2012, by Rob Seal

The University of Virginia’s McIntire Department of Music will host a renowned Bulgarian saxophonist and band leader on Oct. 12.

Yuri Yunakov, a Romani – or gypsy – performer and pioneer of the Bulgarian “wedding music” style, will present a residency and a free concert with his five-piece band. In conjunction, University of Oregon anthropologist Carol Silverman will present a colloquium and will lead a lecture-demonstration with Yunakov and his ensemble.

The joint lecture-demonstration is at 10 a.m. in room B18 in Old Cabell Hall. Silverman’s colloquium address, “Global Gypsy: Romani Music, Representation and Appropriation,” will follow from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in Old Cabell Hall room 107. The concert will begin at 8 p.m. in the Old Cabell Hall auditorium.

UVA Today, Virginia Film Festival Announces Silver Anniversary Program October 2, 2012, by John Kelly

The Virginia Film Festival will celebrate its 25th anniversary Nov. 1-4 in Charlottesville with a slate of more than 100 films and a roster of special guests representing the worlds of film, politics and popular culture.

The festival is presented by the University of Virginia’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

Fresh from three consecutive years of record-breaking attendance and sales, the festival will kick off with a screening of “Sopranos” creator David Chase’s highly anticipated film, “Not Fade Away.” The film – chosen as the centerpiece film of the New York Film Festival – is produced by Academy Award-winning producer Mark Johnson and stars James Gandolfini.

September 2012

UVA Today, Art Exhibition Sparked by Health Care Training Partnership Opens Oct. 2 September 28, 2012, by Eric Swenson

A new exhibit at McGuffey Art Center featuring the work of two Rwandan artists grew out of an effort to improve health care in Rwanda that includes the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

While visiting Rwanda, two U.Va. Health System surgeons, Dr. Forrest Calland and Dr. Robin Petroze, met the organizers of Art with a Mission, a charity serving orphans and other underprivileged children in Rwanda.

Run by artists Emmanuel Nkuranga and Innocent Nkurunziza, the charity’s goal is to use art as a medium to heal, empower and promote life skills and opportunities for these children.

Newsplex.com, UVa Vice Provost Stepping Down September 27, 2012

The University of Virginia's first vice provost for the arts will step down in January.

Elizabeth Hutton Turner has served in the position since 2007 when it was created. Her five-year term ends in January.

The university said Thursday that a search for Turner's successor began this week.

“I am honored to have served as the first Vice Provost for the Arts," said Turner in a statement. "The advances of the last five years – including major gifts, new facilities, new working groups, new grant opportunities as well as public art and University-wide residencies resulting in the creation of new work – are clear indications that the arts have become a priority at the University."

UVA Today, Music Professor, Students To Collaborate On Children’s Music Recording September 27, 2012, by Rob Seal

A University of Virginia music professor will work with a group of undergraduate students to write, record and produce a recording of children’s music during the upcoming year.

Ted Coffey, an associate professor in the College of Arts & Sciences, was among the recipients of this year’s Mead Endowment grants, which fund “dream idea” projects that involve interaction between students and faculty. The endowment is named after music professor emeritus Ernest “Boots” Mead.

Daily Progress, UVa professor appointed to U.S. Commission of Fine Arts September 27, 2012

A University of Virginia landscape architecture professor has been appointed to the commission that reviews designs for the Mall and other major public spaces in Washington, D.C.

Elizabeth Meyer will serve on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. The commission is made up of seven members, appointed to four-year terms with a reappointment allowed.

“Beth Meyer is one of the country’s most highly respected landscape architects, with a deep passion for the design and use of public space in service of democracy,” Kim Tanzer, dean of UVa’s School of Architecture, said in a news release. “Her appointment to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts confirms her significant national contributions to date and provides a venue to extend her value in this important realm. We are all incredibly proud of Beth's contributions to the school, the University and to the country.”

UVA Today, Turner To Step Down in January as Vice Provost for the Arts; University Launches Search for Successor September 26, 2012, by Jane Ford

Elizabeth Hutton Turner will step down in January as the University of Virginia’s vice provost for the arts, a position she has held since its creation in 2007, after completing her five-year term.

Turner, who also is University Professor of modern art and teaches in the College of Arts & Sciences’ McIntire Department of Art, returned to the University – where she earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees – from The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., where she was senior curator. A noted scholar of 20th-century American art, her work as a curator and educator has brought new perspectives on a wide range of artists who bridge the relationship between America and Europe during the modernist period.

UVA Today, U.Va. Drama Department Opens Season Oct. 4 with ‘Rhinoceros’ September 26, 2012, by James Scales

The University of Virginia’s Department of Drama salutes the theater of the absurd when it opens its 2012-13 season on Oct. 4 with the comic nightmare “Rhinoceros” in the Helms Theatre.

One of the most iconic works in the absurdist theater movement, Eugene Ionesco’s 1959 play puts mindless conformity firmly in its crosshairs in response to the seemingly unchecked rise of Nazism and fascism. When residents of a small village begin transforming into rhinoceroses, only one man is able to resist the urge and retain his own individuality and integrity against the pull of mass culture. This funny, bizarre and biting satire is a cautionary tale for all eras.

“It sure sounds like a herd of rhinos stampeding around here,” drama department chair Tom Bloom shouted over the sounds of construction for the new Ruth Caplin Theatre addition to the Drama Building. “And life during construction can get pretty absurd. But seriously, it’s a good play and everyone should come see it.”

NBC29.com, UVA Receives $2M Donation for Arts September 25, 2012

A $2 million donation will support talented performers who want to study at the University of Virginia.

UVA alum Sandy Miller and his wife are giving the money for the College Arts Scholars Program to help students in art, dance, drama, or music. Their donation adds to the program started last year by a gift from the wife of Comedy Central news actor Stephen Colbert.

UVA Today, Special Collections to Restore Film Documenting U.Va. Artist, Professor Charles W. Smith September 25, 2012, by Rob Seal

The University of Virginia Library will preserve and digitize a 1960 film about artist and former U.Va. professor Charles W. Smith, thanks to a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

The 16mm film, “Charles Smith’s Block Painting,” was made in 1960 by U.Va.’s former Division of Extension and General Studies. It documents Smith’s artistic process, which involved a modified version of wood block printing.

Smith, who was born in 1893 and died in 1987, was the first chair of the McIntire Department of Art in the College of Arts & Sciences, said Steven Villereal, audiovisual conservator in the library’s Preservation Services department, who applied for the grant.

NBC29.com, UVA Professor Offers Unique Instrument Opportunity September 24, 2012

The University of Virginia has received a rare gift, thanks to a teacher with a special talent. Now, professor Greg Howard can teach students his passion - the Chapman stick.

The instrument is something like a cross between a guitar and a piano. It's a string instrument, but it's played by tapping, not strumming. Watch the video above and click here to learn more about the Chapman stick and Greg Howard.

UVA Today, Angel Investor for the Arts Gives $2 Million to Arts Scholars Program September 24, 2012, by Jane Ford

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Sandy Miller, a 1971 graduate of the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, knows that a strategic investment can transform a promising enterprise into an outstanding performer.

His decision with his wife, Vinie Zhang Miller, to designate $2 million for the College Arts Scholars program – creating the J. Sanford Miller Family Fund for Arts Scholars – reflects his belief in the program’s high potential, both for individual students and for the University as a whole.

UVA Today, U.Va. Architectural Historian Examines A Different Side of Novelist Edith Wharton September 21 2012, by Jane Ford

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Edith Wharton is best known for her books “The House of Mirth,” “The Age of Innocence,” “Ethan Frome” and others. But the early 20th-century writer also contributed to the fields of architecture and design.

Her first book was the decidedly non-fiction “The Decoration of Houses,” which she co-wrote with architect Ogden Codman. Published in 1897, it was considered a bible of good taste and is still in print.

NBC29.com, Charlottesville Mural Panel September 21, 2012

From 7th Street, to Monticello Avenue, to the University of Virginia, murals are popping up all over Charlottesville. Friday, many of the artists are getting together to talk about what these painted walls mean to the community.

"They bring beauty, they bring a new way of encountering the neighborhood that they're in. I think that the best ones are the ones that tell the story of the neighborhood or tell of the building," said event organizer Deborah McLeod.

UVA Today, Virginia Film Festival Announces Return of Adrenaline Film Project September 20, 2012, by John Kelly

The Adrenaline Film Project, a staple of the Virginia Film Festival since 2004, will again be featured as the event celebrates its 25th anniversary from Nov. 1-4 in Charlottesville.

The festival is presented by the University of Virginia’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

Each year, the Adrenaline Film Project gives a dozen teams of filmmakers the chance to write, cast, shoot, edit and screen an original short film – all in just 72 hours.

UVA Today, Music Department Adds a Chapman Stick to its Collection September 20, 2012, by Rob Seal

The McIntire Department of Music in the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences has received a gift of a Chapman Stick to add to its collection of musical instruments available for student instruction and performance. The instrument’s manufacturer, Stick Enterprises of Woodland Hills, Calif. – headed by the instrument’s inventor, musician Emmett Chapman – made the gift.

Chapman’s instrument is one of only a few truly American instruments. A member of the guitar family, its amplified strings are played by tapping on the fretboard with both hands, a technique that has as much in common with piano as with guitar and bass. The method of play, called “free hands,” was also invented by Chapman in 1969, on a nine-string guitar. He had tuned his guitar in unusual way, with two groups of strings, each ascending in pitch from the center of the fretboard: a bass group in fifths (like a cello), and a melody group in fourths (more like a guitar).

C-Ville, UVA architecture students’ cross-cultural study reflected in exhibit September 19, 2012, by Allie Cooper

Walk into the Elmaleh Gallery at the University of Virginia School of Architecture this month, and you’ll find yourself suddenly processing a myriad of sights and sounds. Sketches, models, photographs, and video images flood the gallery, the final products of the India Initiative, a new study abroad research program offered by the UVA Architecture School.

“What’s on the wall was not India itself, but our view of India, our vision of the future of India,” said senior architecture student Victor Hugo.

In summer 2012, the UVA Architecture School kicked off its first year of the five-year studio initiative, which included a six-week intensive course in India followed by two weeks of processing and preparation for the exhibit back in Charlottesville. The exhibit opened Monday, August 20 in Campbell Hall, and it will stay open until Saturday, September 22, following a multidisciplinary symposium on Friday, September 14, “The Emerging Megacity and the Enduring Village.”

UVA Today, U.Va Students and Hollywood Artists Bring Creatures To Life September 18, 2012, by Lisa Kessler

Last week, monsters were born at the University of Virginia.

Over the course of three days, 26 graduate and undergraduate students constructed six life-sized moving creatures with the help of Hollywood artists from the Stan Winston School of Character Arts. The creature workshop was the first of four that will be held throughout the academic year as part of the yearlong interdisciplinary course, “The Art of the Moving Creature I and II.”

The course grew from an “Arts in Action“ grant proposal last spring and is cross-listed in the School of Architecture and the College of Arts & Sciences’ Drama and Studio Art departments.

UVA Today, U.Va.’s Fralin Museum of Art To Host Weedon Asian Arts Lecture on Sept. 27 September 12, 2012, by Jane Ford

The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia will host Melissa Chiu for an Ellen Bayard Weedon Lecture in the Arts of Asia on Sept. 27. Her lecture, “The Art of Contemporary Ink Painting,” will be held at 6:30 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 153.

Chiu’s lecture will accompany museum’s new exhibition, "Ancient Master in Modern Styles: Chinese Ink Paintings from the 16th-21st Centuries," on view through Dec. 16.

UVA Today, Free ‘Symphony Under the Stars’ To Feature Trumpeter John D’earth September 12, 2012, by Rob Seal

The University Programs Council of the University of Virginia and the Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra are joining forces to present “Symphony Under the Stars” on Sept. 22 at 8 p.m. First launched in 2009, this free outdoor pops concert will take place in U.Va.’s McIntire Amphitheater. The rain date is Sept. 23 at 8 p.m.

Conducted by music director Kate Tamarkin, the orchestra will kick off its 2012-13 season, “Let’s Dance!,” with a fun-filled program of symphonic choreography. Highlights include Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown” from his ballet “Rodeo,” Aram Khatchaturian’s “Sabre Dance” and Angel Villoldo’s “Tango Argentino.” This year’s salute to the music of Broadway features selections from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” and Frank Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls.”

UVA Today, U.Va.’s Fralin Museum of Art To Host Weedon Asian Arts Lecture on Sept. 20 September 11, 2012, by Jane Ford

The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia will host David Ake Sensabaugh for an Ellen Bayard Weedon Lecture in the Arts of Asia on Sept. 20. His lecture, “Gardens and Gatherings in Qing Dynasty Painting,” will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 153.

Sensabaugh’s lecture will accompany museum’s new exhibition, "Ancient Master in Modern Styles: Chinese Ink Paintings from the 16th-21st Centuries," on view through Dec. 16.

UVA Today, India as Classroom: Architecture Students Explore Design and Construction Through New Initiative September 10, 2012, by Jane Ford

In India, a land of many contrasts and one of the world’s fastest emerging economies, old and new blend to create a rich tapestry of experiential opportunities.

For 14 undergraduates and graduate students in the University of Virginia School of Architecture’s new India Initiative, India was their classroom and design studio for six weeks this summer. The goal: travel, engage and discover, research and design.

The students, who hailed from six different countries, visited historical and contemporary buildings, attended lectures about history or architecture in the buildings themselves, met with local practitioners and developed their own designs for sites in four cities. They visited two architecture schools and interacted with Indian students. They also conducted individual research projects they had identified during a spring introductory seminar, part of the India Initiative curriculum.

UVA Today, TechnoSonics XIII to Focus on Intersection of Music, Politics September 9, 2012, by Rob Seal

This weekend, the University of Virginia’s Virginia Center for Computer Music will present two days of events exploring the intersection of music and politics, and will partner with the Music Resource Center and the Bridge for a special student hip-hop showcase on Saturday.

TechnoSonics XIII: Music and Politics, features guest composers Christopher Adler and Mara Helmuth, and guest performers Christopher Adler, Mark Menzies, Morris Palter and members of UVa’s Rivanna String Quartet. The events on Friday and Saturday will be both on and off Grounds. TechnoSonics XIII is supported by the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts.

UVA Today, U.Va. Drama Season To Kick Off in the Helms, Conclude in New Caplin Theatre September 5, 2012, by John Kelly

The University of Virginia Drama Department’s 2012-13 season will go from the ridiculous to the sublime, bookended by Eugene Ionesco’s celebrated absurdist comedy “Rhinoceros” in the fall and the spring debut of the state-of-the-art Ruth Caplin Theatre with the classic screwball comedy “You Can’t Take it With You.”

In between, audiences will get a chance to experience the passion and power of the Tony Award-winning musical “Spring Awakening” and discover a talented new voice in the theater world with “God’s Ear,” a powerful, poignant and funny look at life, love and loss by playwright Jenny Schwartz.

August 2012

UVA Today, Folk Artists to Show Their Stuff Sept. 16 August 31, 2012, by Tori Talbot

There’ll be musicians picking banjos and strumming dulcimers, members of the Chickahominy tribe dancing and cobblers showing off their hand-crafted shoes at the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Showcase, to be held Sept. 16 at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

The foundation, which is affiliated with the University of Virginia, will hold the ninth annual festival of its Virginia Folklife Program from 1 to 5 p.m. at the foundation’s conference center in the Boar’s Head complex. The event, free and open to the public, will feature the music, crafts and traditional skills of Virginia’s folk masters and their apprentices.

UVA Today, Grant Ensures Success of Kluge-Ruhe Collection’s Resident Artist Program August 31, 2012, by Lauren Maupin

Aboriginal artist Yhonnie Scarce (Kokatha/Nukunu) will visit the University of Virginia for an artist residency Sept. 1 through 15. “What They Wanted,” an exhibition of her works in glass and other media, will be on view at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection Sept. 11 through Dec. 30.

Scarce’s residency will include an artist talk on Sept. 5 and a public reception with the artist on Sept. 14. Aboriginal curator Tess Allas will give a guided tour of “What They Wanted” on Sept. 15 . Scarce also will lecture to several classes at U.Va.

UVA Today, Kilts, Fiddles and … Powdered Wigs? New Book Surveys Haydn's Musical Legacy, Contributions to Scottish National Music August 31, 2012, by Rob Seal

Though he never set foot in Scotland, Austrian composer Joseph Haydn believed toward the end of his life that he'd made his mark on that country’s culture.

“I flatter myself that with this work I shall go on living in Scotland many years after my death,” Haydn wrote in a letter to Scottish publisher George Thompson in 1801.

A new book edited by University of Virginia associate professor of music Richard Will explores the many contributions of a composer long overshadowed by his countryman and contemporary, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and by his one-time student, Ludwig van Beethoven.

UVA Today, Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra Announces 2012-13 Season August 27, 2012, by Janet Kaltenbach

The Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra is set to host an extended dance party, rolling out its 2012-13 season with the theme, “Let’s Dance!”

“Someone once said that all music is based on song or dance,” Kate Tamarkin, the orchestra’s music director, said. “This season, the orchestra will present an orchestral sampling of all genres of dance, from classical ballet to non-Western folk dance to the mambo. The traditional forms of ballroom dance are also represented. It seems that composers had no shortage of inspiration in the realm of dance. It promises to be a delightful party.”

UVA Today, Film Festival, Miller Center Launch ‘Presidency in Film Series’; 25th Anniversary Challenge Created August 27, 2012, by John Kelly

The Virginia Film Festival’s upcoming 25th anniversary year will feature the launch of an annual “Presidency in Film” series, presented in conjunction with the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.

One of the highlights of the series will be a screening of the political classic “All the President’s Men” to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Watergate. The Nov. 2 screening will feature special guest Bob Woodward, associate editor of the Washington Post.

UVA Today, Special Collections Exhibit to Commemorate Charlottesville's 250th Anniversary August 27, 2012, by Rob Seal

Artifacts evoking a quarter millennium of Charlottesville history, from the oldest known city map to a section of the rope used to hang a murderous mayor, will be on display this fall in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.

The Charlottesville 250th Anniversary Exhibit, cosponsored by Special Collections and the University's Office of Community Relations, opens Tuesday and runs through Jan. 5. It's free and open to the public and will be displayed concurrently with the city's anniversary observations.

The Cavalier Daily, Welcome to the U.Va. Arts Scene, A&E explores the University's premier artistic venues August 24, 2012, by Monica Mohapatra

Previously known as the University of Virginia Art Museum, The Fralin is the hub of the University art scene, housing some of the most prized pieces in the University’s collection. The exhibits range over a variety of decades and styles, and the likes of Frank Stella and Edgar Degas line the walls. The museum also offers a variety of internships and a decent program for students interested in Arts Administration.

The center of U.Va.’s Fine Arts program, Ruffin features everything from sculptures and paintings to art based on new media. Student work is frequently showcased alongside professional exhibitions. Last year, Ruffin featured pyrotechnic artist Rosemarie Fiore within the ‘Touched by Virginia’ series. Ruffin is also a convenient place to go to drop-in figure drawing classes and find out about other arts events.

UVA Today, U.Va.'s Fralin Museum of Art Photography Exhibit Makes Science Visible August 17, 2012, by Jane Ford

"Making Science Visible: The Photography of Berenice Abbott," which opens Aug. 31 at the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, explores how the photography of Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) has been used in both artistic and scientific contexts.

Abbott's images are important in art, science, documentaries and the history of science education. Trained in New York as a sculptor, she left for Europe in 1921. In Paris, she became the Surrealist artist Man Ray's photographic assistant and saw the photographer Eugène Atget's work. In 1929, Abbott returned to New York and began a series of documentary photographs of the city and directed the "Changing New York" project for the Works Progress Administration in 1939.

UVA Today, The Fralin Museum of Art at U.Va. Links Ancient Masters and Modern Styles in Chinese Ink Painting Exhibition August 16, 2012, by Jane Ford

The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia will feature works of Chinese painters spanning more than five centuries in "Ancient Masters in Modern Styles: Chinese Ink Paintings from the 16th-21st Centuries." The exhibition demonstrates a rich variety of Chinese ink painting and the continuing relevance of tradition to Chinese artists today. The exhibition opens Aug. 31 and runs through Dec. 16.

The Chinese art of ink painting is an ancient and continuously practiced tradition transmitted and learned in part through the study of the works of past masters. Until the 20th century, studying the styles of the greatest artists of the past was seen as the fundamental basis for learning the art of painting in China.

UVA Today, The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia Exhibits 'Jean Hélion: Reality and Abstraction' August 14, 2012, by Jane Ford

The French painter Jean Hélion made his name as an abstract painter. Throughout the 1930s, he created extraordinary geometrical compositions that balance pristine clarity with both a strongly dynamic feeling and a sense of unceasing transformation. But by the end of the decade, Hélion turned in a different direction and began to paint worldly subjects in a realistic style.

The University of Virginia's Fralin Museum of Art explores Hélion's evolution in "Jean Hélion: Reality and Abstraction." The exhibit, curated by art history professor Matthew Affron of the College of Arts & Sciences, who is also the museum's curator of modern art, runs from Aug. 31 through Dec. 16.

Arts & Science News, Making headlines from UVA to NYC – Exhibition of The Adoration of the Magi by Bartolo di Fred August 10, 2012

The New York Times describes a summer exhibition of “The Adoration of the Magi by Bartolo di Fredi,” as a “tiny, perfect show.” Organized and originally appearing at the University of Virginia, the exhibition is presently being hosted by the New York Museum of Biblical Art in Manhattan. The U.Va. exhibition of the work in March-May 2012 was curated by Francesca Fiorani, an associate professor of art history in the College of Arts & Sciences, and Bruce Boucher, U.Va. Art Museum director, and in collaboration with Dr. Anna Maria Guiducci, director of the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena. The reuniting of the surviving components of this 14th century work, together for the first time since the late 18th century, was made possible through a special agreement between the U.Va. Art Museum and the Italian government. The Manhattan exhibit is free to the public, and provides what the Times calls an “expressive installation, a readable, inexpensive catalog” in a package “that is, among other things, a sterling example of what university museums do best, and better than anyone else.” Read more about it in the New York Times. This is not the first high praise given to the show while in New York. A July 2012 article in the New York Observer named the show "one of the must-see exhibitions of the summer."

New York Times, Come Let Us Adore Him, ‘The Adoration of the Magi’ at Museum of Biblical Art August 9, 2012, by Holland Cotter

The baby’s feet must smell sweet to the rapt old king who kneels and cups them to his face like flowers. One of three sages and seekers, he’s come a long way to find this child, who sits upright, grave and alert, on his mother’s lap, though he’s only 2 weeks old.

The old man, the somber child and the silent mother are just a few of the many acutely detailed figures in an astonishing 14th-century Italian painting that has, as if by miracle, left its home in Siena for the first time and landed at the Museum of Biblical Art in Manhattan as the main attraction of a tiny, perfect show called The Adoration of the Magi by Bartolo di Fredi: A Masterpiece Reconstructed.

UVA Today, The Valley of the Shadow: American Landscapes in the Time of the Civil War' Opens Aug. 31 at U.Va's Fralin Museum of Art August 8, 2012, by Jane Ford

Representing the American landscape around the time of the Civil War posed a major challenge to artists working in the mid-19th century. The University of Virginia's Fralin Museum of Art will explore their responses to this dilemma in "The Valley of the Shadow: Landscapes in the Time of the Civil War," which opens Aug. 31 and runs through Dec. 16.

While artists such as those associated with the Hudson River School expressed a vision of American nature that was breathtakingly beautiful and that evoked an image of the potential for expansion and development that remains powerful today, the actual American landscape they knew was fraught with political and social tensions and defined by unprecedented change.

July 2012

UVA Today, Scholars' Lab Uses Aerial Photography to Document Parking Lot's Artful Transformation July 30, 2012, by Rob Seal

Staff in the University of Virginia's Scholars' Lab have applied their do-it-yourself aerial photography skills to document a studio art professor's project transforming a suburban parking lot into a subtle mural visible from the sky.

Megan Marlatt, a professor in the College of Arts & Sciences, worked with students to install a large painting on a parking lot on the southwest corner of U.S. 29 and Westfield Road.

Boston.com, An oxymoronic event of purposeful randomness, July 28, 2012, by Becket

The vibrant, very much living members of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company are surrounded by ghosts in Story/Time. In a general way, this is not so unusual; contemporary dance often bears a proud aura of its ancestral shadows. But Jones, the creator of Story/Time, has long performed with his own, particular ghosts — Zane, Jones’s lover and co-director, who died in 1988; his parents, Estelle and Gus; the dancer Demian Acquavella — who are at times faintly discernible in his work, at other times front and center.

And now John Cage makes his posthumous debut with the company, the composer’s 1958 Indeterminacy serving as inspiration for Story/Time, which is presented this week at Jacob’s Pillow. In one version of Indeterminacy, Cage read a series of wry one-minute stories while parts of his compositions were played by the musician David Tudor: Neither component was staged to complement the other, thus creating an oxymoronic event of purposeful randomness.

Read more >

UVA Today, Students Question 'What Is Art?' in Summer Philosophy Course July 27, 2012, by Jane Ford

Ancient philosophers pondered the meaning of art, posing questions about aesthetics. Plato's theory of the arts featured the ideas of imitation of reality and human action, and Aristotle's became a cornerstone of Western art, focused on elements of symmetry, harmony and composition.

Students in the University of Virginia summer session course, "The Philosophy of Art," taught by graduate student Gwen Nally, are learning about how philosophers have addressed aesthetics through the ages.

UVA Today, U.Va. Summer Course Examines Rock Music's Role in American Culture July 19, 2012, by Matt Kelly

Is Bruce Springsteen his generation's Woody Guthrie? Did Bob Dylan and Nirvana rework 17th-century songs for the modern market? Is rock 'n' roll music part of the American cultural DNA?

University of Virginia students are answering those questions, and others, in Steve Knepper's summer session course, "Popular Song Lyrics: American Rock."

UVA Today, Computer Animation Course Puts Design in Motion July 19, 2012, by Jane Ford

Blending technology and creativity, University of Virginia students in a summer computer animation course created virtual oceans – complete with waves, bubbles, reflections in the water, and even a boat that moves through the waves with a trailing wake.

It was all part of a hands-on lesson in fluid dynamics effects in School of Architecture professor Earl Mark's "Computer Animation: Design in Motion" course, during which students from a variety of disciplines explored 3-D modeling and movie-making.

June 2012

U.Va. Innovation Blog, U.Va. Architecture’s “Breathe House” Erected in Haiti June 29, 2012, by Morgan

We checked in with U.Va.’s Initiative reCOVER this week, following the build of its innovative “Breathe House” in the Haitian community of Bois l’Etat, near St. Marc.So named for its natural ventilation strategy, the Breathe House was designed by students in the U.Va. School of Architecture. Led by Anselmo Canfora, the team took first place in an international competition that sought disaster-recovery solutions for Haiti’s displaced population following a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in January 2010. (Read more about the Breathe House here.)

UVA Today, Western Landscape Broadens Summer Photography Students' Horizons June 20, 2012, by Jane Ford

Since Thomas Jefferson sent explorers to the West, the landscape has inspired painters, photographers and "earth artists," whose canvas is the land itself.

Students in the University of Virginia summer session course "Earth Art and Photography" spent two weeks drawing inspiration for their own photography from that same landscape, creating works that are about places, and learning to reveal their "emotional and intellectual response to the world," said William Wylie, the course's instructor.

UVA Today, Filmmakers Invited to Submit Work for 25th Anniversary Virginia Film Festival June 6, 2012, by John Kelly

The Virginia Film Festival has issued a call for entries, inviting filmmakers to submit feature films, documentaries, shorts, animation and experimental works for consideration for its upcoming 25th anniversary year.

The 2012 festival is scheduled for Nov. 1-4 in Charlottesville. It is presented by the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences.

UVA Today, Learn to Groove: Jospe Keeps the Beat in Teaching, Community Outreach June 6, 2012, by Rob Seal

If you ask percussionist Robert Jospé, everyone has rhythm.

"Everybody can play music," he said. "Rhythm is an innate quality that everybody has. Everybody can keep a simple beat. Just listen to children at play – you can hear all kinds of rhythm."

UVA Today, U.Va.'s Fralin Museum of Art Exhibits 'Photography from the Museum Collection' June 4, 2012, by Jane Ford

The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia will exhibit "Photography from the Museum Collection" in two exhibitions June 8 through Aug. 5.

These two exhibitions, curated by the museum's curator of exhibitions, Jennifer Farrell, engage key moments in the history of photography while also highlighting important pieces from the Fralin Museum's rich collection. Both build on "100 Years of Photography," which was on view at the museum January through May 2011 and curated by Matthew Affron, associate professor of art history and curator of modern art, to accompany his spring semester course, "The History of Photography."

May 2012

UVA Today, Creative Writing Student Gregory Jackson Wins Fiction Prize May 29, 2012, by Anne E. Bromley

University of Virginia graduate student Gregory Jackson is the 2012 winner of the Henfield Prize in Fiction for his short story, "The Sort of Thing Micah Heard."

Jackson will receive a $10,000 award funded by the Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation, which endowed the prize at U.Va. and four other writing programs last year.

UVA Today, Music Professor Wraps Up Successful Pilot Year of Arts Outreach May 25, 2012, by Rob Seal

On a recent evening, University of Virginia music professor Bonnie Gordon watched a handful of local children select the instruments they will play in school band next year.

She was there with Lauren Hauser, a doctoral student in English, and Sarad Davenport, the Charlottesville director of City of Promise, a community education program. Just a couple of months earlier, Gordon had taken some of the kids for their first visit to the Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra's Musical Instrument Petting Zoo and helped familiarize them with those same instruments.

UVA Today, U.Va. Names Art Museum for Cynthia and Heywood Fralin May 21, 2012, by Jane Ford

Cynthia and W. Heywood Fralin, longtime supporters of the arts in the commonwealth of Virginia, have announced their intention to donate their collection of American art to the University of Virginia Art Museum. The 40-piece collection, which includes works by John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt and Robert Henri, is the largest single gift of art in the University's history.

To honor this major contribution, as well as Heywood Fralin's lifetime of service to the University, the Board of Visitors today voted to name the museum the "Fralin Museum of Art."

UVA Today, U.Va. Music Professor's 'Rotunda, A Living Portrait" Now Available on DVD May 18, 2012, by Rob Seal

"Rotunda, A Living Portrait," composed from images and sounds of the University of Virginia's Rotunda and Lawn captured over the course of a year, is now available on DVD.

Judith Shatin, an acclaimed composer and William R. Kenan Jr. professor of Music in the College of Arts & Sciences, created the piece with filmmaker Robert Arnold, director of the School of Film & Photography at Montana State University.

UVA Today, Heritage Theatre Festival Preparing for 'Historic' Summer May 17, 2012, by John Kelly

History will be both made and celebrated this summer when Heritage Theatre Festival presents a one-time-only, single-show "season" featuring the beloved musical "1776."

The production, presented in partnership with the city of Charlottesville's "Celebrate 250," will be directed by Robert Chapel, Heritage's producing artistic director and a drama professor in the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences.

UVA Today, U.Va. Art Museum Exhibit Depicts Urban Landscapes May 16, 2012, by Jane Ford

The University of Virginia Art Museum opens a new exhibition, "Emilio Sanchez: Cityscapes," on May 30. Focusing primarily on images of urban scenes, it will be on display through Aug.12.

The exhibition examines the work of the Cuban-American artist Emilio Sanchez. Sanchez, who spent most of his life in the United States, studied architecture at U.Va. from 1941 to 1943 before moving to New York City to attend the Art Students League.

UVA Today, New U.Va. Art Museum Exhibit Spotlights the Feminine in Modern French Art May 11, 2012, by Jane Ford

The University of Virginia Art Museum showcases images of femininity in the exhibit "Émilie Charmy and the Feminine in Modern French Art," which opens May 18 and runs through Aug. 5.

Charmy, who lived from 1878 to 1974, was a highly original exponent of modern art in Paris during the first half of the 20th century. She developed her artistic personality by engaging with impressionism, post-impressionism and fauvism in the years leading to World War I. She became known for her expressive depictions of the female form.

UVA Today, U.Va. Art Museum Exhibits 'American Impressionism and After: Highlights from the Collection of W. Heywood Fralin Sr. and Cynthia Kerr Fralin' May 9, 2012, by Jane Ford

The University of Virginia Art Museum will feature a selection of masterpieces in the special exhibit "American Impressionism and After: Highlights from the Collection of W. Heywood Fralin Sr. and Cynthia Kerr Fralin." The exhibition will run from May 12 through 22.

Heywood Fralin is a member of the University's Board of Visitors and former rector. He and his wife, Cythia Kerr Fralin, are longtime supporters of art in the state and avid art collectors.

UVA Today, Class of 2012: Tousignant Combines Interests in Sufi Dance, Poetry May 9, 2012, by Rob Seal

Maura Tousignant has been a world traveler since the beginning.

The fourth-year University of Virginia student is the daughter of a U.S. Foreign Service officer and was born in Belgium. Growing up, she spent four years in South Africa, and also lived in Norway and Benin.

April 2012

UVA Today, Student Partnership Award Honors Arts Administration Professor George Sampson April 27, 2012, by Dan Heuchert

The University of Virginia Student Council has selected George Sampson, research associate professor of arts administration and design thinking in the School of Architecture, as the recipient of its 2012 Leonard W. Sandridge Student Partnership Award.

The Student Council established the award in 2010 to recognize faculty and administrators for their "continued dedication to working with students." As the council's Academic Affairs Committee co-chair Niklaus Dollhopf noted, the Sandridge Award is especially reflective of influence on and connection with students because "it's an all-student process, from the nominations to the selection committee."

UVA Today, Slon Appointed Music Director of Oratorio Society of Virginia April 27, 2012, by Rob Seal

Michael Slon, an assistant professor and director of choral music in the University of Virginia's College of Arts and Sciences, has been selected as the music director of the Oratorio Society of Virginia, the organization announced recently.

Slon is only the seventh director in the 44-year history of the society, a Charlottesville-based choral group that includes both amateur and professional musicians. It typically performs three times per season, including an annual Christmas presentation at the Paramount Theater.

UVA Today, Art Teachers Integrate Science Into Their Lessons at U.Va. Eastern Shore Workshop April 27, 2012, by Lisa Littman

Artists and scientists gathered at the University of Virginia's Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center April 20-22 to paint, as well as study, salt marshes on the Eastern Shore.

The center's manager, Art Schwarzschild, a research faculty member in the Department of Environmental Sciences of the College of Arts & Sciences, spearheaded the art and ecology workshop that taught local public school art teachers how to integrate environmental sciences into their classes.

UVA Today, U.Va. Professor Wins Smithsonian Book Prize for Tracing Slave Trade Through Abolitionist Art April 24, 2012, by Jane Ford

University of Virginia art history professor Maurie McInnis has been awarded the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art for her book "Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade," published in 2011 by the University of Chicago Press.

Her book, which traces the American slave trade through the visual and written records of Eyre Crowe, a British artist who visited a slave auction in Richmond in 1853, was recognized for its integration of art and cultural studies, according to the Smithsonian's announcement.

UVA Today, Class of 2012: Artist Hannah Barefoot Joins Craft and Nature in Her Work April 23, 2012, by Jane Ford

Creating imagined environments that are based on a thirst for learning and producing the tools to make her art are a passion for Hannah Barefoot, a studio art major in the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences who will graduate May 20.

For her fourth-year show in Ruffin Gallery, part of her distinguished major thesis, Barefoot created a series of abstract prints and sculptures she described as embodying "a language associated with the environment, but something not totally articulated."

UVA Today, Virginia Film Festival Announces New High School Filmmaking Competition April 17, 2012, by John Kelly

The Virginia Film Festival announced today that it is expanding its Community Outreach and Education programs to include a new high school filmmaking competition.

The annual festival is presented by the University of Virginia's College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

UVA Today, U.Va. Art Museum Conference To Study Bartolo di Fredi and the Art of His Time April 11, 2012, by Jane Ford

The University of Virginia Art Museum will hold an international conference, Bartolo di Fredi and the Art of his Time, on April 27, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., in Campbell Hall, room 153. The event is free and open to the public.

The conference is in conjunction with the museum's exhibit, The Adoration of the Magi by Bartolo di Fredi: A Masterpiece Reconstructed, which reunites pieces of a 14th-century Sienese altarpiece for the first time in over 600 years. The exhibit, which is accompanied by an illustrated catalog, is on view Tuesdays through Sundays, from noon to 5 p.m., through May 27.

UVA Today, U.Va. Art Museum Exhibits Japanese Woodblock Prints April 11, 2012, by Jane Ford

Drawing on its rich collection of Japanese prints, the University of Virginia Art Museum will feature a second exhibition of 19th-century Japanese color woodblock prints.

Legend: Japanese Color Woodblock Prints will be on view from April 24 through Aug. 5. It follows Love: Japanese Color Woodblock Prints, which closes April 22. Both are curated by Stephen Margulies.

UVA Today, U.Va. Drama Offers Fresh Look at Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet April 5, 2012, by John Kelly

The University of Virginia Drama Department is peeling back the layers of one of the most oft-told love stories with a new production of Romeo and Juliet.

Set to debut April 19 at Culbreth Theatre, this production is directed by Brantley Dunaway, executive director of the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival.

UVA Today, Once More, With Feeling: U.Va. Music Library Helps Develop Digital Format for Music Notation April 4, 2012, by Rob Seal

An international effort spearheaded by the University of Virginia Music Library is paving the way for powerful new digital tools for music scholars.

The Music Encoding Initiative, or MEI, is the name of both a new open-source format for digital music notation and of the organization working to develop it, which includes U.Va. Music Library staff and international collaborators.

UVA Today, U.Va. Professor, Students to Create Painting Visible On Google Earth April 3, 2012, by Jane Ford

A group of artists and students, working under the direction of University of Virginia artist and studio art professor Megan Marlatt, plan to create a large painting on an asphalt parking lot beginning April 6.

The artists and students, known as "The Cardboard Collective," includes students Marie Bergeron, David Cook, Carmen Diaz, Shiry Guirguis, Margaret King, Brendan Morgan and Cherith Vaughan and Marlatt's husband, photographer Richard Robinson.

Kluge-Ruhe News, Vernon Ah Kee to visit UVa as Resident Artist April 2012

Aboriginal artist Vernon Ah Kee will visit the University of Virginia for an artist residency April 4 – 12. Ill-like, an exhibition of his drawings and textual works, is on view at the Kluge-Ruhe Collection through May 10. Ah Kee’s textual works can also be viewed at Brooks Hall Commons and at the International Residence College on UVa Grounds.

Ah Kee’s residency will include an Artist Talk on April 5, a guided tour of ill-like on April 7, and a public reception with the artist on April 12. In addition Ah Kee will be guest lecturing to several courses at UVa, and may produce an in situ artwork on Charlottesville’s community chalkboard on the Downtown Mall.

March 2012

UVA Today, Leonardo da Vinci's Legacy Is Focus of U.Va. Digital Project, Conference March 30, 2012, by Jane Ford

Leonardo da Vinci is considered one of the greatest painters of all time, and his legacy and theory of painting have had a lasting effect on artists through the centuries.

A new University of Virginia archive, "Leonardo da Vinci & His Treatise on Painting," created by Francesca Fiorani, an art history professor in the College of Arts & Sciences, digitally documents the legacy of Leonardo as a writer on the theory of art. A conference on da Vinci April 12-14 at U.Va. will officially launch the archive.

UVA Today, Arab-Iranian Artist To Be U.Va.'s Painter-in-Residence March 22, 2012, by Katherine Ripley

Arab-Iranian artist Samira Abbassy, whose work deals with women, war and identity, will be a Painter-in-Residence in the Studio Art Program of the University of Virginia's McIntire Department of Art.

Abbassy will be in residence and creating her own work from April 1 through 29 in Ruffin Hall's studio 323. She will lecture on her work April 4 at 5:30 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 158. She also will give critiques in painting classes and work with Aunspaugh Fifth-Year Students whose work focuses on painting.

UVA Today, Dance Program to Present Annual Spring Concerts March 20, 2012, by Joyce Carmen

The University of Virginia's Dance Program will present its annual Spring Dance Concert on March 29 and 30 at 8 p.m. and on March 31 at 2 and 8 p.m. in the Helms Theatre.

The concert will feature original contemporary dance works by U.Va. student and faculty choreographers, and two more by visiting choreographers Danah Bella and Susan Wiesner. It reflects the collaborative spirit of dance and challenges U.Va.'s student dancers in new and exciting ways, said Kim Brook Mata, interim director of the dance program, which is offered as a minor in the College of Arts & Sciences.

UVA Today, Music Department, Library Work to Capture the Sound of Jefferson's America March 19, 2012, by Rob Seal

The images of early American history are easy to visualize: Jeffersonian architecture, redcoats and revolutionaries, powdered wigs, flags with the slogan "Live Free or Die." But its soundtrack is elusive.

Now, a pair of University of Virginia events will conjure and examine the sounds of early America, from the parlor music of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello to slave songs and bawdy tavern sing-alongs.

UVA Today, Jazz Greats Bill Cole and Joseph Daley to Perform at U.Va. Chapel March 15, 2012, by Gary Funston

The Charlottesville Jazz Society, the University of Virginia Arts Administration program and WTJU 91.1 FM, the University's radio station, will co-present a concert by jazz musicians Bill Cole and Joseph Daley in their first-ever duet performance on March 29 at 8 p.m. at the U.Va. Chapel.

Doors will open at 7 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at the door only, and will be free for students, $5 for members of the Charlottesville Jazz Society and $10 for all others.

UVA Today, Welcome Spring with U.Va. Authors and the Virginia Book Festival March 15, 2012, by Anne E. Bromley

Author Lee Smith said it's like coming to a family reunion. Another attendee said, "They made me laugh and they made me cry – that's about as good as it gets."

"What better way to spend the first week of spring than ... celebrating books and the promise of good things to come?" added a previous participant.

Those enthusiastic reviews were written about the Virginia Festival of the Book. This year's edition of the mid-Atlantic's biggest book club begins Wednesday and runs through March 25 and will showcase almost 400 writers from all genres, more than 50 of them University of Virginia faculty, staff and alumni.

UVA Today, U.Va. Drama Department Celebrates the Circus March 13, 2012, by John Kelly

George Brant's drama "Elephant's Graveyard," opening March 21 at Culbreth Theatre, will serve as the centerpiece of the University of Virginia's four-day celebration of the art of the American circus – and the career of circus expert LaVahn Hoh, a drama professor in the College of Arts & Sciences.

"Elephant's Graveyard" is the story of the collision between a struggling circus and a tiny Tennessee town in 1916, and how it resulted in the only known lynching of an elephant. The play combines historical fact and legend to tell the true and tragic tale, using first-person narrative to relay the perspectives of the circus folk and townspeople alike and capture their thirst for spectacle, violence and revenge. "Elephant's Graveyard," directed by Richard Warner, will be presented at 8 p.m. on March 21 through March 24.

Cavalier Daily, Phantoms at the box office: Capping free student tickets would not help fill seats during symphonies or shows March 13, 2012, by Katherine Ripley

Coming from someone who has been on stage many times, I know how disappointing it is to see empty seats when the curtain opens, especially when so many long hours of practice have gone into preparing for the impending performance. Those vacant chairs are like hopes which ring hollow. Actors and musicians want to play for a full house, and having worked so hard they deserve the opportunity to do so. Unfortunately, the University’s Arts Dollars program is hindering this prospect for some groups of performers.

Do not get me wrong — I think it is fantastic that students are able to reserve free tickets for shows, and I have taken advantage of this privilege myself. The downside of the Arts Dollars program is when many students neglect to come and claim their tickets on the nights an event happens. As an employee of the University Arts Box Office, I have seen an immense amount of student tickets go uncollected on the night of a show. At the last concert I worked, there were still about fifty tickets in the will-call box after the music started, and all of them were for students.

Cavalier Daily, ‘Arts Madness’ kicks off March 13, 2012, by Catherine Jessee

The College Council hosted a film screening yesterday evening of “Habibi Rasak Kharban,” a film written, directed and produced by 1999 University alumna Susan Youssef. The screening kicked off Council’s “Arts Madness” initiative, a weeklong celebration of art at the University which will conclude March 20 with a student art auction.

Council President and third-year College student Nabilah Jiwani said Council brought Youssef to the University to provide a voice to the political aspect of arts and media.

Cavalier Daily, This is madness: the arts invade grounds March 13, 2012, by Rachel Lim

Move aside, March Madness — Arts Madness is here. From today to March 20, expect the arts craze to take over during the University’s first annual arts week. This mega-event is a result of the combined efforts of Student Council, the University Programs Council, College Council and the Vice Provost for the Arts Office.

“Raising the awareness of art on Grounds is important not only because it has been neglected in the past, but also because it plays so well off of other endeavors at the University,” said Kelsey Petrie, a member of the Student Council Student Arts Committee. “Visual culture and expression cannot be separated from the sciences, from engineering, and from student life and academia in general because it is, at its core, deeply and irrevocably a result of and influenced by this whole.”

C-Ville, UVA's Brooks Museum resurrected through cardboard March 6, 2012, by Sarah Sargent

A collaboration between The Cardboard Company and New York artist Tom Burckhardt, “The Brooks Natural History Museum C. 1900: A Creative Interpretation,” opened at Ruffin Gallery on February 24. The installation is a whimsical re-imagination of UVA’s defunct natural history museum, which occupied Brooks Hall from 1877 through the 1940s, constructed of brown cardboard (60 percent recycled), black paint, and the creativity of the collaborators. Burckhardt, the 2011-12 visiting artist chosen by the student-run UVA Arts Board, made the show’s centerpiece, a very sympathetic mammoth being led by Henry Ward, the natural history entrepreneur whose company made the original plaster and fur version for the Brooks Natural History Museum.

The show is right up my alley. Bursting with energy, it’s imaginative, original, and just plain fun. I loved the handmade quality, which is fresh and authentic. Upon entering Ruffin Hall, you are greeted by The Cardboard Company’s version of Brooks Hall’s façade spilling out of the gallery space that’s marvelously re-created in extreme perspective.

UVA Today, Preview of Award-Winning 'Telematic Opera' Set for Monday March 1, 2012, by Rob Seal

Performers in Miami, Indianapolis and Charlottesville will take advantage of advanced network technology Monday to preview music from an award-winning opera by University of Virginia music professor Matthew Burtner.

"Auksalaq: A Telematic Opera," which will debut in its entirety in October, uses high-speed Internet connections to link audiences and performers from multiple sites. On Monday, an audience in New World Symphony Hall in Miami will see a preview of about 30 minutes of music. The performers there will be joined by others at the Tavel Center in Indianapolis and in a classroom in U.Va.'s Old Cabell Hall.

February 2012

UVA Today, Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra To Salute American Stage and Screen February 28, 2012, by Janet Kaltenbach

The Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra continues its 2011-12 "Bridges" season with a program titled "Bridges Across Genres" on March 24 at 8 p.m. at the University of Virginia's Old Cabell Hall, and March 25 at 3:30 p.m. at Monticello High School in Albemarle County.

Conducted by music director Kate Tamarkin, the all-American program will explore genres that have broadened the orchestral repertoire, including ballet, film scores, Broadway and jazz.

UVA Today, Scholar Louis Menand to Speak on Andy Warhol March 22 February 28, 2012, by Jane Ford

Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar Louis Menand will lecture on "The Education of Andy Warhol" on March 22 at the University of Virginia. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Menand's talk, the U.Va. Art Museum's annual Gladys S. Blizzard Lecture, will be the inaugural lecture for the new Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures in the College of Arts & Sciences.

UVA Today, 'Portraits in Color' Step Event Honors Black Artists Who Inspire February 28, 2012, by Anne E. Bromley

A call went out, one performer led, and then 14 pairs of feet and hands stomped and crashed in perfect unison. For several minutes, their percussion rolled like thunder over the audience that packed the Newcomb Hall Ballroom. As the step-dancing segment ended, roaring applause rushed to fill the sudden vacuum of sound.

The performers are the University of Virginia student step team, Step It Up. The group's "Portraits in Color" showcase on Friday was its sixth annual performance, but the talent and choreography were fresh and fierce.

C-Ville Weekly, UVA Art Museum reassembles a 14th century Italian masterpiece February 28, 2012, by John Ruscher

A momentous reunion is happening at the University of Virginia. No, we’re not talking about alumni returning to town to relive their glory days. This goes back much further than even Mr. Jefferson himself—all the way to 14th century Italy, when painter Bartolo di Fredi took up his brush to create an altarpiece for a church in his native city of Siena. As he applied his tempera and gold leaf, he surely didn’t imagine that half a century later parts of his painting would scatter across the globe, nor that they would be reunited for “The Adoration of the Magi by Bartolo di Fredi: A Masterpiece Reconstructed,” an exhibition opening Friday at the UVA Art Museum.

“Bartolo’s most famous work was probably a series of frescoes that were painted in the town of San Gimignano, which is near Siena, in the late 1360s,” Bruce Boucher, who joined the museum as director in 2009, told us. Boucher, along with UVA Associate Professor Francesca Fiorani, co-curated this exhibition, which was inspired by a portion of Bartolo’s altarpiece that found its way into UVA’s collection. “When I came here I thought it would be great for our public if we could try to reunite the three surviving pieces of this altarpiece, to show that the painting, pretty though it was, was merely a small part of a much larger structure,” Boucher said.

UVA Today Blog, Alum’s U.Va.-Based E-Novel Released Wednesday February 24, 2012, by Dan

The Snows of Rugby Road, an e-book written by 1959 U.Va. alumnus Al Cash, was released on Wednesday. It features a cover photo by UVA Today’s very own senior photographer, Dan Addison.

What’s it about?

According to the description on Amazon.com, the story centers on Eddie Lee Tavener, who comes to U.Va. in 1956 leaving behind a dysfunctional home life. He loves two women in his life and loses them both to untimely deaths. The story traces his time from 1956 when he enters U.Va. through bouts of substance abuse, to buying a large farm, to dying alone in a Manhattan apartment in 2006 having reached the conclusion that life is hard and then you die; so live each day to the fullest.

UVA Today, U.Va. Professor Explores Lost History of Russian-Jewish Composers February 22, 2012, by Matt Kelly

University of Virginia historian James Loeffler explores the lost world of Jewish composers working in Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution in his new, award-winning book.

"The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire," examines composers who viewed themselves as both Jewish and Russian and who saw their work contributing to both identities. He focuses on the second half of the 19th century through the Russian Revolution, covering two generations of composers.

Charlottesville Tomorrow, Winning design for Belmont: No bridge, more connectivity for Belmont and Downtown Mall February 21, 2012, by Courtney Beale

The winning entry in the grassroots contest to design a new Belmont Bridge is a proposal that recommended eliminating the bridge altogether. Community members and exhibitors gathered together Sunday at CitySpace to learn the results of the Project Gait-Way design contest.

With over 120 ballots for 36 entries, the jurors and the public agreed that the UVa project, “Belmont Unabridged,” was the best idea for the city. The concept won first place in all four categories: Judges’ Best Bridge Design, Judges’ Best Urban Design, People’s Choice Best Bridge Design and People’s Choice Best Urban Design.

UVA Today, Exhibit of Professor's Projects on Display in Architecture School Dean's Gallery February 16, 2012, by Jane Ford

"Studies," an exhibit by W.G. Clark, Edmund Schureman Campbell Professor in the University of Virginia's School of Architecture, will be on display in the Dean's Gallery in Campbell Hall Feb. 24 through June 3.

An opening reception will be held Feb. 24 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., in conjunction with the Arts Grounds Final Fridays event. The exhibit will be open weekdays from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.

The exhibit consists of sketches and models – studies for projects that were never built, plus drawings for a built project, the east addition of Campbell Hall, which was dedicated in 2008.

UVA Today, Arts, Humanities Get Their Turn in the Spotlight as Obama Honors U.Va.'s Dove February 14, 2012, by Anne E. Bromley

"The glow in their faces. The cameras, the smiles, the applause – all for the arts and humanities!"

That's one of the thoughts University of Virginia English professor and poet Rita Dove said ran through her mind as she sat in the White House East Room on Monday, waiting to receive the 2011 National Medal of Arts.

President Obama awarded the medal to Dove and seven other artists at a Feb. 13 ceremony. He offered a handshake or kiss on the cheek to each recipient, and he jokingly teased Dove about needing another award, she said.

UVA Today, Artist, Students Use Cardboard and Paint to Reinterpret Brooks Hall Natural History Museum
February 13, 2012, by Jane Ford

A wandering woolly mammoth trudges its way across the McCormick Road crosswalk and takes up residence in the University of Virginia's Clark Hall. This creature is the centerpiece in a new Ruffin Gallery exhibit that reinterprets a piece of University history – using only black paint and cardboard.

A group of 12 studio art students from the College of Arts & Sciences known as "The Cardboard Company" having been working with New York artist Tom Burckhardt to construct an artistic interpretation of the Brooks Hall Natural History Museum circa 1900. The museum, which opened in the Victorian Gothic building just east of the Rotunda on University Avenue in 1877 and ceased functioning as a museum in the 1940s, was one of the most impressive and innovative museums of natural history in the nation, complete with a replica of a woolly mammoth on permanent display.

C-Ville, For those of you about to rock (WTJU salutes you) February 14, 2012, by John Ruscher

Russell Perry remembers WTJU’s first rock marathon. “We were raising money to change the signal from mono to stereo,” the former DJ told us. “After raising the money and making the improvements, we switched over to stereo with great fanfare and inaugurated our new status by playing ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ It didn’t seem like such a hackneyed choice in the mid-’70s.” As Jimmy Page’s guitar solo soared into the stratosphere, a great tradition was born. Quoth Robert Plant: “When all are one and one is all, to be a rock and not to roll.”

Point your radio to 91.1 FM or your computer to wtju.net (do it, right now!) and you’ll hear the latest WTJU Rock Marathon, which kicked off Monday and will broadcast nonstop all week. In addition to programs delving into everything from Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” to West African guitar music, the marathon will also feature live in-studio performances and a weeklong countdown of WTJU’s top 50 songs since the station took to the airwaves in 1957. “It’s not just about the new rock and the contemporary rock and the deep cuts that we often play,” General Manager Nathan Moore told us. “It’s also about looking at the history of rock and roll.”

Cavalier Daily, Obama honors Rita Dove: University English Prof. receives 2011 National Medal of Arts for poetry February 14, 2012, by Michaela Accardi

University English Prof. Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English, received the 2011 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in the East Room of the White House yesterday, along with 19 other honorees.

The medal is the highest award given by the U.S. government to artists and arts patrons in recognition of their contributions to the excellence, support and availability of the arts in the United States.

UVA Today, 'Belmont Vortex' Workshop Links U.Va. Architecture School and Community February 13, 2012, by Jane Ford

Nearly 300 University of Virginia School of Architecture students and faculty members, along with public officials and citizens, gathered Saturday at the Music Resource Center in Charlottesville to view the presentations of "Belmont Vortex," a bridge-design workshop that occupied almost the whole school for 10 days.

The effort was in response to "Project Gait-Way," a challenge to design a replacement for the crumbling Belmont Bridge, which carries 9th Street from downtown Charlottesville over the CSX and Buckingham Branch railroad tracks to the Belmont neighborhood, where it becomes Avon Street.

UVA Today, U.Va. Students Create New Theater Troupe, 'Idly Bent' February 13, 2012, by Jane Ford

Matthew Minnicino, a fourth-year drama and English major in the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences, and Anne Haney, a fourth-year comparative literature major, used this quote as a starting point to form Idly Bent Theater, a new undergraduate group that produces plays for the Charlottesville community.

The group was founded two months ago and is made up of seven passionate theater students. Minnicino explained that the group wanted a deeper connection with the Charlottesville theater community, rather than be a student organization that only produced drama on Grounds.

Charlottesville Tomorrow, UVa teams unveil Belmont Bridge concepts February 12, 2012, by Sean Tubbs

More than 300 people packed into Charlottesville’s Music Resource Center on Saturday to review the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture’s conceptual plans for redeveloping the city’s Belmont Bridge.

“The ideas are many and varied and the level of practicality varies from project to project, but I think that in almost every single one of them there is a nugget to pull out that can give us a principle of how to proceed,” said City Councilor Kathy Galvin.

LA Times, National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medals announced February 10, 2012, by Carolyn Kellogg

The White House announced the recipients of the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medals today. Poet Rita Dove (above) is the leading literary figure among the seven who will receive the National Medal of Arts, joining actor Al Pacino, singer Mel Tillis, painter Will Barnet, sculptor Martin Puryear, pianist André Watts, and creative arts patron Emily Rauh Pulitzer.

Rita Dove served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 1993 to '95. Dove, born in 1952 in Ohio, received an MFA from the University of Iowa and published her first poetry collection in 1980. She won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for the collection "Thomas and Beulah." She teaches at the University of Virginia; her many accolades include a National Humanities Medal.

UVA Today Blog, Rita Dove To Receive National Medal of Arts Monday February 10, 2012, by Dan

Late-breaking news from the White House (really!): President Obama will award U.Va. English professor Rita Dove the National Medal of Arts on Monday afternoon.

Dove — the former U.S. Poet Laureate — is to be among eight recipients of the award. Others include actor Al Pacino and classical pianist Andre’ Watts. Obama will also hand out nine National Humanities Medals. The event begins at 1:45 p.m. and will be streamed live online here.

NewPlex.com, UVa Students Celebrate Black History Month Through Spoken Word February 9, 2012

In celebration of Black History Month, Just Lyricz, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Incorporated and the University of Virginia's Office of African American Affairs held an open mic Thursday evening.

UVA Today, U.Va. Professor's New Book Considers American Slave Trade Through Art February 7, 2012, by Jane Ford

Although the international slave trade was abolished in the United States in 1808, the trading of slaves within the states remained big business, boosting the economy by tens of millions annually in the 1850s. Between 1820 and 1860, it is estimated that more than 2 million enslaved people were sold in the American slave trade; from Virginia alone, more than 350,000 were sold out of the state and were taken to the lower South – Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade, a new book by Maurie McInnis, art history professor and associate dean for academic programs in the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences, tells the story of the slave trade from the vantage point of British artist Eyre Crowe's paintings and drawings.

HamptonRoads.com, Va. Beach man wins $1M for Super Bowl Doritos ad February 7, 2012, by Diane Tennant

The "Today" show, "World News with Diane Sawyer," the Princess Anne High School faculty - everybody wants a piece of Huff the Great Dane and Jonathan Friedman, the local man who won $1 million with his Doritos commercial during the Super Bowl.

"It's exciting, crazy," Friedman said by phone Monday afternoon from Indianapolis, where the game was played. "I haven't gotten any sleep. I'm really tired. I did a ton of interviews this morning. It's just been kind of overwhelming."

UVA Today Blog, Alum’s Super Bowl Ad Wins $1 Million Prize February 6, 2012, by Dan

We at UVA Today headquarters can now brag: We blogged about Matthew Friedman weeks before he, his brother, an actor friend and Huff the Great Dane found fame and fortune by winning a Super Bowl ad contest.

Matthew Friedman is the 1995 U.Va. Arts & Sciences alum, who, with his brother, entered a commercial for Doritos in the annual “Crash the Super Bowl” contest. Matthew contacted us looking to drum up online votes to get his creation — which he claims to have shot for less than $20 — aired during the Super Bowl broadcast. That effort succeeded, and he won $25,000 and tickets to the game.

UVA Today, WTJU 91.1 FM To Cover History of Rock During Feb 13-19 Marathon February 6, 2012, by Nathan Moore

WTJU, the University of Virginia's radio station, is holding its annual Rock Marathon and pledge drive Feb. 13-19.

The week of special programming will revisit beloved classics and offer new music adventures at 91.1 FM and WTJU.net. From Charlottesville indie rock bands to West African guitar, from doo-wop to dub techno, WTJU's Rock Marathon promises programming that is both inspired and inspirational, station manager Nathan Moore said.

UVA Today, Poetry Program Prepares Students for Life -- and Careers February 3, 2012, by Anne Bromley

English professor Lisa Russ Spaar's tiny office lures the student into her magical world, leaving behind the ubiquitous brick walkways and plain white walls of University of Virginia's familiar halls. Glinting frames hold paintings and prints from various eras, forming a crooked ladder up the tall, narrow wall to the ceiling, and a bowl of candy in shiny wrappers sits on a small table.

At the corner of her overflowing desk, Spaar perches over a nest of pages, shuffling until she produces several sheets stapled together, a list of 100 names – all the graduates of the Area Program in Poetry Writing since she founded it 10 years ago, not long after she published her first book of poems, "Glass Town."

UVA Today, Reunited Components of 14th-Century Sienese Altarpiece Will Be on View at the U.Va. Art Museum February 2, 2012, by Jane Ford

"The Adoration of the Magi" by Bartolo di Fredi, an altarpiece that once stood in one of the major churches of Siena, Italy, from its completion around 1385 until it was dismantled at the turn of the 19th century, will be reunited and on view at the University of Virginia Art Museum from March 2 through May 27.

After being dismantled, the altarpiece was divided into at least four portions: the main panel featuring the "Adoration of the Magi" remained in Siena; two portions of the predella, or lower register, ended up in the U.Va. Art Museum and the Lindenau-Museum of Altenburg, Germany, respectively; and a third portion of the predella, which is missing.

January 2012

The Cavalier Daily, Doubt display celebrates uncertainty January 30, 2012, by Monica Mohapatra

Blurred images and hazy landscapes dominate Beauty in Doubt, a Ruffin Gallery exhibit featuring the unconventional oil paintings of Tom Burckhardt , who abandons the canvas for cast-plastic backgrounds. Burckhardt’s new work underscores the doubt present in the things we see around us and the things we attempt to construct.

Even in a time when digital photography and modern sculpture tend to eclipse more traditional art forms, for Burckhardt, the evolution of painting has a lot of room for growth . In fact, painting is more important than ever to illuminate the absurd nature of how we live today.

The Design Observer, If There Be Such Space January 26, 2012, by Josh Wallaert

Crouched in the broken shadow with the sun at his back and holding the trap at eyelevel against the morning sky he looked to be truing some older, some subtler instrument. Astrolabe or sextant. Like a man bent at fixing himself someway in the world. Bent on trying by arc or chord the space between his being and the world that was. If there be such space. If it be knowable.
—Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

There are few exchanges more thrilling than conversation with someone who knows how to read a particular landscape. If you hang around the West long enough, you run into these people — geologists, botanists, firefighters, river guides — and by long enough, I mean ten or twenty minutes. No sooner have you arrived in a new town than you’ve met an alfalfa farmer who can identify tractors by the sound of their engines, or a desert ecologist who names forb species and military aircraft with equal skill. (Nevada will do that to a person.) Before lunch, you’ve met our most common variety of expert, the real estate developer, whose unique genius is to read the conditions of a site and imagine its material transformation, figuring out where the rocks will be dynamited and the water feature installed, an ability which never fails to impress, even as it sometimes appalls.

UVA Today, 'The Warrior With Eleven Heads' on View in Ruffin Hall January 23, 2012, by Jane Ford

"The Warrior With Eleven Heads," an exhibition of sculpture created by students in a University of Virginia January Term course, "Special Topics in Sculpture, 'The Warrior,'" will be on view in the RuffStuff Gallery on the first floor of Ruffin Hall from Jan. 27 through Feb. 4. The gallery is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

An opening reception will be held Jan. 27 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public. During the reception, the head of the life-sized warrior will be changed every five minutes.

UVA Today, U.Va. Music Department Hosts Two Weekends of Chamber Music January 23, 2012, by Rob Seal

The University of Virginia Chamber Music Festival will feature music faculty performing timeless pieces over the next two weekends, according to event organizers.

The festival, hosted by the McIntire Department of Music in the College of Arts & Sciences, begins Friday in Old Cabell Hall with a performance by the Rivanna String Quartet.

In the past, faculty recitals were spread out in four concerts throughout the year, said festival director Ayn Balija, a violist who is part of the music department's performance faculty. This year, organizers moved to a new format that allows them to package the performances together.

UVA Today, Charlottesville Oscar Night America Party to Benefit Virginia Film Festival January 23, 2012, by John Kelly

Local residents are invited to experience the thrills and surprises of the 84th Academy Awards on Feb. 26 at Charlottesville's own "Oscar Night America" party.

The local event, to be held at the Paramount Theater beginning at 7 p.m., is one of 49 parties officially sanctioned by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that will be held across the country on Oscar night.

UVA Today, Expert on Campus Design to Lecture at U.Va. School of Architecture January 19, 2012, by Ellen cathey

Pablo Campos, internationally recognized author and speaker on university campus planning and design, will speak Jan. 25 at 5:30 p.m. at the University of Virginia' s School of Architecture on Urban & Architectural University Models.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Campbell Hall, room 158.

New York Times, Bill T. Jones Takes a Turn on the Stage in New Work January 18, 2012, by Felicia R. Lee

It’s tempting to say that Bill. T. Jones has followed the classic trajectory from artistic outsider to consummate insider. Mr. Jones, a choreographer, writer and theater director whose reputation was built on provocative work that marries high-art aesthetics with social concerns, has journeyed from the stages of downtown dance to two Tony awards for choreography and a Kennedy Center Honor. But Mr. Jones, in a recent interview, insisted that he is still a “stranger in a strange land,” making an “audacious” shuttle between avant-garde and commercial audiences.

“Story/Time,” his newest work, set to premiere Saturday at the Peak Performances series at Montclair State University, represents his official return to performing after a few years away as well as a return to his experimental mode. He said “Story/Time,” a co-commission of Peak Performances and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis was inspired by the composer John Cage’s “Indeterminacy,” first performed in 1958, a series of one-minute spoken-word stories that was different each time it was performed and was eventually recorded as an album. Mr. Jones’s version puts him at a desk onstage, reading his own series of mostly autobiographical stories, as his troupe’s nine members surround him. Each performance is 70 minutes long and includes 50 to 70 stories, as well as silences.

UVA Today, Kluge-Ruhe Opens 'ill-like,' Featuring Works of Aboriginal Artist Vernon Ah Kee January 18, 2012, by Lauren Maupin

The Kluge-Ruhe Collection will open, "ill-like," an excerpt of works by contemporary Australian Aboriginal artist Vernon Ah Kee, on Jan. 24.

Ah Kee is recognized for his unapologetic explorations of the mistreatment of Aboriginal people. This exhibition is composed of imposing textual works, disappearing line drawings from a series titled "unwritten," and a new body of work the artist calls "lynchings" that will premiere in this exhibition.

UVA Today, U.Va. Art Museum Opens Four New Exhibits Jan. 20 January 17, 2012, by Jane Ford

The University of Virginia Art Museum kicks off 2012 with four new exhibits that represent an array of media, genres and artists. The exhibits – all of which open Jan. 20 – are Master Printmakers: The Italian Renaissance and Its Modern Legacy, 100 Years of Photography, Curator's Choice: People, Places, and Things and Tom Burckhardt: Paintings.

UVA Today, Chinese Terra Cotta Warrior Sculptures Are Jumping-Off Point for J-Term Class January 13, 2012, by Jane Ford

In 1974, Chinese farmers working in their field discovered more than 8,000 life-sized terra cotta warrior figures from the tomb of the first emperor of China. Since then, the figures have been the topic of research by art historians, conservationists and artists.

For 11 students in William Bennett's January Term course, The Warrior, learning about the Chinese figures formed the basis for them to imagine and sculpt their own images of modern-day warriors.

UVA Today, Collaborative Photography Exhibit Opens Jan. 27 at U.Va.'s Ruffin Gallery January 12, 2012, by Jane Ford

The University of Virginia's Ruffin Gallery will exhibit If There Be Such Space: Michael Lundgren and Aaron Rothman, a collaborative installation of photography, from Jan. 27 through Feb. 17.

Lundgrun and Rothman, photographers based at Arizona State University, have spent the past decade engaged in a common exploration of landscape, investigating complex connections between photography, perception and the natural landscape. They share ideas, experiences and experiments, yet have each created unique bodies of work that at times have a similar approach and process and at other times have diverged.

UVA Today, Symposium on National Museum of African American History and Culture to be Held at U.Va. January 11, 2012, by Jane Ford

Re-Imagining the Public Realm: The Design of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, a multidisciplinary symposium being organized as part of the University of Virginia's Martin Luther King Jr. observance, will be held Jan. 23 at U.Va.'s School of Architecture.

The symposium will explore the unique challenges and opportunities of representing African-American history and culture on the National Mall, and will be followed by a lecture, Current Museum Projects, by Philip Freelon, architect of the Museum of African American History and Culture.

UVA Today, Dutch Master: Drummer Han Bennink to Perform Jan. 27 January 9, 2012, by Gary Funston

As part of his 70th birthday world tour, the Charlottesville Jazz Society and WTJU present drummer/percussionist Han Bennink in concert Jan. 27 at 8 p.m. in Brooks Hall at the University of Virginia.

WTJU, 91.1 FM, is U.Va.'s community radio station.

UVA Today, Virginia Film Festival Receives $20,000 Grant from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences January 3, 2012, by John Kelly

The Virginia Film Festival has received a $20,000 grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to help fund its education and outreach programs.

The festival is presented annually by the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences. Thanking the academy, film festival director Jody Kielbasa said, "From the first day I arrived in Charlottesville three years ago, I have made community outreach and education a major priority. I am extremely proud of what we have accomplished under the direction of our community outreach and education coordinator, Jane Freeman, and look forward to continuing to expand our programs and to share the magic of film with more people than ever before."

December 2011

The University of Virginia Magazine, Rotunda Guitar: Engineers create an unusual instrument, Winter 2011

In honor of the School of Engineering’s 175th anniversary, Gavin Garner, an assistant professor in the mechanical and aerospace engineering department, helped four of his students design and build a one-of-a-kind guitar that is also a replica of the Rotunda.

“Probably the most difficult part of the process was coming up with ways to mount and cut out the body and neck on the CNC (computer numerically controlled) machine,” says Jacob Bagwell (Engr ‘12), one of the students who made the walnut-and-mahogany guitar. “The neck was slightly too long for the CNC table and it also had a 15-degree angle from the face of the neck to the headstock, which made mounting for cutting the headstock interesting as well.”

Newsplex, Local Author Publishes First Novel to e-Reading Community , December 27, 2011

A Charlottesville native and University of Virginia graduate followed an emerging trend when publishing his first novel. Jay Paul Hodgkins self-published Colin Rose: At Magic’s Dawn to e-readers only.

Following an emerging trend of new authors building a following by self publishing for popular e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle or Apple’s iPad, Charlottesville native and 2003 University of Virginia graduate Jay Paul Hodgkins recently published his first fiction novel.

UVA Today, U.Va. Shape-Note Singing Apprentices Keep Folk Music Traditions Alive, December 20, 2011, by Rebecca P. Arrington

Squares. Triangles. Circles. The shapes jump off the page at you, but it's not a geometry lesson. Rather, it's sheet music for a folk tradition called "shape-note singing."

University of Virginia employees Diane Ober and John Alexander, who are married, have been refining their skills in this art through an apprenticeship as part of the Virginia Folklife program, an offering of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

UVA Today, Special Collections Exhibit Showcases Artwork by Famous Authors, December 14, 2011, by Rob Seal

Works by some of the most renowned writers in American literature are on exhibit in the University of Virginia's Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, but they aren't what you'd think.

There's a doodle by Mark Twain, a sketch by William Faulkner, paintings by Henry Miller and a cartoon cowboy drawn by O. Henry. The exhibit is "Beyond Words: The Writer's Art," and showcases a wealth of visual art by creative minds better known for their literary skills.

UVA Today, Two Teams Garner First U.Va. Arts in Action Project Grants, December 6, 2011, by Jane Ford

The Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts at the University of Virginia has awarded the first Arts in Action Project Grants to two collaborative teams of faculty artists.

The grants are a component of "Arts in Action on Grounds," a new public arts initiative to increase the public profile of the arts Universitywide by facilitating arts-based research and to supporting the development of an arts-informed curriculum. Funds were provided by the Board of Visitors as part of its commitment to the Commission on the Future of the University, a group charged with proposing strategic directions for the University for the next decade and beyond. The grant winners were selected by a faculty peer review committee.

November 2011

The New York Times, The 10 Best Books of 2011, November 30, 2011

Two books by alumni, The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach (College, MFA '04) and Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson (College, MFA '05) are among the best five works of fiction in this New York Times gift guide.

The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach. Little, Brown & Company, $25.99.
At a small college on the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan, the baseball team sees its fortunes rise and then rise some more with the arrival of a supremely gifted shortstop. Harbach’s expansive, allusive first novel combines the pleasures of an old-fashioned baseball story with a stately, self-reflective meditation on talent and the limits of ambition, played out on a field where every hesitation is amplified and every error judged by an exacting, bloodthirsty audience.

Ten Thousand Saints, by Eleanor Henderson. Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers, $26.99.
Henderson’s fierce, elegiac novel, her first, follows a group of friends, lovers, parents and children through the straight-edge music scene and the early days of the AIDS epidemic. By delving deeply into the lives of her characters, tracing their long relationships not only to one another but also to various substances, Henderson catches something of the dark, apocalyptic quality of the ’80s.

UVA Today, U.Va. Art Museum Launches Free Interactive iPad App, November 28, 2011, by Jane Ford

It's now much easier to access some of the University of Virginia Art Museum's collection, thanks to a new interactive 3-D iPad app, available for free at the iTunes App Store.

This interactive virtual catalog – designed to enhance distance learning and research – currently includes 19 works from the collection, the majority of which are on view in the museum's Object Study Gallery, and one painting. Plans call for adding 150 more works.

UVA Today, U.Va. Architecture Professor Examines Concepts of Architectural Detailing in New Book, November 28, 2011, by Ellen Cathey

What is an architectural detail? And what does it say about a building? University of Virginia architecture professor Edward Ford sets out to answer, or at least probe, these questions in his new book, "The Architectural Detail."

"Essentially, architectural detail is a concept that gets used a lot, but is rather nebulously defined” in terms of what people mean," said Ford, Vincent and Eleanor Shea Professor of Architecture. "This book was about establishing a definition and surveying theories that have been provided over the years."

UVA Today, U.Va. Drama Student Pens Play About the Fall of Troy, November 22, 2011, by Jane Ford

Some characters are gods, goddesses and heroes. And then there's Helen, said to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

Student playwright Matthew Minnicino had a lot of rich material to draw upon for his original play, "Troy is Burning," which the University of Virginia Drama Department presents nightly at 8 in the Helms Theatre from Nov. 30 through Dec. 3. There will be 2 p.m. matinee performances Dec. 3 and 4.

UVA Today, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company Residency at U.Va. Highlights a Life in Dance, November 15, 2011, by Jane Ford

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's third weeklong residency at the University of Virginia was filled with numerous opportunities for students and the public to see Jones at work and hear first hand how he translates ideas into performance.

And what ideas. About music and movement. Mortality and meaning. Learning. Leadership.

"To watch a great artist tackling big questions; watch him develop and change over time, we see what it means for the arts to lead the conversation," Elizabeth Hutton Turner, vice provost for the arts, said.

C-Ville, Story/Time with Bill T. Jones: Jones wraps up a UVA residency with a work-in-progress, November 15, 2011, by Spencer Peterson

In 1958, composer John Cage gave a lecture titled “Indeterminacy” that would be remembered as a milestone in post-war avant-garde composition. Sitting at a desk in front of an auditorium of people, he read a series of randomly ordered one-minute stories to the accompaniment of electronic scratches, distorted recordings of music and the occasional mashed piano chord. According to choreographer Bill T. Jones, whose latest work is based on “Indeterminacy,” Cage was effectively teaching composers to “get their own taste out of the way.”

In Story/Time, which previewed at Culbreth Theater last week as the capstone to Jones’ three-year UVA residency, Jones sits at a desk and reads 70 one-minute stories while the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company moves around him as a large LED keeps time. For the piece, Jones wrote a total of 140 stories about his life and choreographed a dance for each. Before the company begins rehearsing for a single performance, 70 of the vignettes are picked in random order, and a dance is created from what Jones calls a “menu of movement events,” around which UVA composer Ted Coffey arranges music from a palette of experimental sounds.

UVA Today, Innovative French Course Brings Film, Language and Students Together, November 9, 2011, by Jane Ford

University of Virginia students crowd around video cameras and editing software in the Digital Media Lab. They greet each other with "bonjour" instead of "hello," then continue in French as they discuss their documentary film.

They are in a new French language and literature course in the College of Arts & Sciences called "Reel Life Stories." Designed and taught by associate French professor Alison Levine, it bridges the gap between foreign language and filmmaking.

Levine developed her passion for film during graduate school when she worked for video production companies in France and the United States. In the early 1990s, she made two films – one analyzing Louisiana's French-language speakers and another focusing on Haitian immigrants in Richmond.

UVA Today, Virginia Film Festival Finishes with Record 27 Sold-Out Screenings, November 9, 2011, by John Kelly

The 24th annual Virginia Film Festival, which concluded Sunday, made history with a record 27 sold-out screenings.

The weekend included 115 screenings in all, plus appearances by Oliver Stone, Sissy Spacek and Jack Fisk, Larry Flynt, Rachael Harris, Bill T. Jones and others. The community festival included screenings of features, documentaries and short films, as well as special events, parties, family events and outdoor projections.

The Daily Progress, Bill T. Jones shares stories of a life in dance, November 4, 2011, by David Maurer

Long before the limelight of the stage illuminated Bill T. Jones, he had danced in the glow of a jukebox.

The music machine had been in the living room of Jones’ early childhood home in Bunnell, Fla. It was there where he first experienced the exuberance of dance.

“I grew up in a household where we would provide entertainment for migrant workers who worked for my father,” Jones said recently by cell phone as his driver carefully maneuvered along an icy road near Laramie, Wyo.

Cavalier Daily, Bill T. Jones returns to Charlottesville, November 3, 2011, by Rachel Lim

Avant-garde composer John Cage once described his ethos for writing music by saying, “I gave up making choices. In their place I put the asking of questions.”

Cage was one of the most famous proponents of indeterminancy in music — the idea that chance could be incorporated into a work so that every performance would differ from another. One of the most iconic works of this theory is Cage’s aptly titled “Indeterminancy,” in which Cage read 90 short stories in 90 minutes while music played in random segments in the background.

UVA Today, Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection's Bark Painting is a Virginia Endangered Artifact, November 2, 2011, by Jane Ford

A bark painting held by the University of Virginia's Kluge-Ruhe Art Collection has been selected as one of Virginia's "Top 10 Endangered Artifacts."

"Djarrakpi Story" (1966) by Narritjin Maymuru, was announced by the Virginia Association of Museums as a winner in its 2011 Virginia's Top 10 Endangered Artifacts Program, a competition among Virginia museums to raise awareness about preserving artifacts in the care of museums, libraries and archives throughout the Commonwealth.

October 2011

UVA Today, U.Va. Brings Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company Back for a Week of Events, October 31, 2011, by Jane Ford

Bill T. Jones and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company will be Artists in Residence at the University of Virginia from Nov. 6 to 11. Their visit completes a three-part U.Va. residency during which Jones and company researched and developed a new dance-theater work.

The residency leads off with the University's annual Arts Assembly, "Creative Exploration and the University." Jones will discuss his artistic process, from creative inspiration to final production, with filmmaker Gordon Quinn following a screening of two documentaries, "A Good Man" and "100 Migrations." These films chronicle Jones's exploration and creation of the Lincoln-inspired dance-theater piece "Fondly Do We hope ... Fervently Do We Pray."

The Daily Progress, Film festival welcomes UVa graduate Witt's new film, October 28, 2011, by Jane Norris

Growing an audience takes care, determination, patience and time. No wonder, then, that the Virginia Film Festival has invited a University of Virginia alumnus to share a film that has taken more than two decades to ripen for enjoyment.

The 24th annual festival gets under way Thursday with a slate of screenings, including a showing of Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants,” starring George Clooney. It’s followed by the Opening Night Gala, which will be at 9 p.m. at the University of Virginia’s Alumni Hall. Screenings, discussions and a host of other events will continue through Nov. 6.

Paul Junger Witt, the Emmy Award-winning producer of “Brian’s Song” and “The Golden Girls,” will be presenting “A Better Life,” his latest film. Chris Weitz is the director.

UVA Today, The Virginia Film Festival's Digital Media Gallery opens Friday, October 26, 2011, by Jane Ford

The Virginia Film Festival's Digital Media Gallery returns Oct. 28 through Nov. 6.

The gallery will feature a variety of film and projection art installations created by students and local artists, curated by filmmaker and studio art professor Kevin Everson of the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences.

UVA Today Blog, In New Exhibit, Philadelphia Artist Captures Images of Personal Hardship, October 19, 2011, by Jane Ford

Philadelphia artist Daniel Heyman states on his website, "The choice of subjects is the most important moment an artist has for expressing himself – it's the moment when he says, 'This is what I am about.'"

An exhibit of his work, "Bearing Witness: Daniel Heyman," curated by Dean Dass, a studio art professor in the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences, opens Oct. 28 at U.Va.'s Ruffin Gallery and runs through Dec. 2. The exhibit is on view weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

UVA Today Blog, Students Explore a Range of Interests Through College Arts Scholars Awards, October 19, 2011, by Dan

Working on an off-Broadway play, having your own large-format camera, enjoying a stint at a music academy and peeking at the behind-the-scenes functions of a famous dance festival were dreams come true this summer for four University of Virginia arts students.

The rising fourth-year students, chosen from among the ranks of the College Arts Scholars program, received grants that allowed them to pursue a summer experience in their fields of study.

UVA Today Blog, Fourth-Year U.Va. Student Initiates Madison House's First Arts Partnership, October 19, 2011, by Rebecca P. Arrington

Last spring, when Carey Sargent, then a University of Virginia graduate teaching assistant, assigned students in her "Public Sociology" course to volunteer in the Charlottesville community, one took it a step farther.

As a result of the class, Garland Gay, now a fourth-year sociology major in the College of Arts & Sciences, founded the first arts and music program at Madison House, U.Va.'s student volunteer clearinghouse.

UVA Today Blog, Introducing … Calder Cam!, October 19, 2011, by Dan

There’s a new webcam on Grounds, and it’s trained on Tripes.

Tripes is the big, black metallic sculpture — technically called a “stabile” — in front of Peabody Hall. It was created by renowned American sculptor Alexander Calder. One of its points of interest is how its appearance changes in different atmospheric conditions — light, weather and seasons — as well as when approached from different directions.

The Cavalier Daily, Old Cabell expands hours, October 17, 2011, by Michelle Davis

Practice modules in Old Cabell Hall will now be open three hours earlier on Sundays as part of an initiative headed by the Student Council Arts Committee to expand practice hours.

The modules, previously open from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Sundays, will now operate from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. The change, implemented yesterday, is a trial run, as University administrators will track the frequency with which the modules are used.

A Speak Up UVA post asked for the modules to remain open 24 hours a day and brought to light student discontent about limited practice module hours. State budget cuts in 2008 forced the University to reduce practice module hours to deal with the cuts.

The Cavalier Daily, Rising profile of arts on Grounds, October 13, 2011, by Rachel Lim

Walking past the unassuming Booker House on University Avenue, it’s easy to discount the small brick building’s impact on the Betsy and John Casteen Arts Grounds just down the street. The University’s cultural hub has undergone radical transformations as part of Virginia 2020, a long-term plan which includes arts emphasis at the University. Behind these buildings lies a quieter transformation at the University, in the office of Elizabeth Hutton Turner, the vice provost for the arts.

Turner became the first person to hold the position when she began her tenure in 2008. Indeed, the creation of her office represented the growing importance of art at the University by creating a space where “the arts are the No. 1 priority,” Turner explained. “We’re committed to the idea that the arts should be for everyone, and should be represented everywhere at the University.”

UVA Today, Mellon Foundation Grant to Fund U.Va. Art Museum Academic Curatorship, October 11, 2011, by Jane Ford

The University of Virginia Art Museum has received a four-year, $315,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a new, full-time academic curator who will aid and expand the museum's curatorial and academic programming mission as a teaching museum. The curator will also play an essential role in developing initiatives that integrate the museum with innovation in the humanities across the University.

The museum now stands poised to fulfill Thomas Jefferson's vision for a teaching museum," museum director Bruce Boucher said. "The new position will be at the center of the museum's expanded role as a powerful catalyst for academic pedagogy and research."

The academic curator will hold a joint appointment in the museum and the College of Arts & Sciences that will be funded by the grant for three years, after which the museum and the University will assume funding responsibility.

UVA Today, Stone, Spacek, Flynt Headline 24th Virginia Film Festival, October 5, 2011, by John Kelly

The Virginia Film Festival returns for its 24th year from Nov. 3-6, featuring a lineup of more than 100 films and a long list of special guests.

The festival is presented by the University of Virginia's College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

Coming off its most successful year, the festival will feature four days of movie magic, kicked off with a special opening night screening of Alexander Payne's "The Descendants," which stars George Clooney. The film is one of many in the festival that have been earning buzz at major festivals this season, including the much talked-about silent film, "The Artist"; the chilling psychological thriller, "We Need to Talk About Kevin"; David Cronenberg's latest, "A Dangerous Method"; the creative political satire, "Butter"; and others.

UVA Today, Alumna Fiore's Fireworks Explode onto the U.Va. Art Scene, October 4, 2011, by Jane Ford

One night, when Rosemarie Fiore was an undergraduate art student at the University of Virginia, she had a dream. In it, she walked through a room filled with floating paint, navigating its layers.

Though she didn't yet know it, her idea for working with colored smoke had already started taking shape.

Even then, Fiore, a 1994 graduate of the College of Arts & Sciences who is now an artist based in New York, was "processing paint by imagining it as smoke as a medium of fireworks."

UVA Today, U.Va. Music Professor Wins Technology Award for Telematic Opera, October 4, 2011, by Rob Seal

University of Virginia music professor and composer Matthew Burtner is among the winners of 2011 IDEA awards for an innovative opera that uses advanced networking technology to connect audiences and performers spread around the globe.

The awards, announced today by Internet2, are designed to "recognize and encourage innovative advanced network applications that have the most positive impact and potential for adoption within the research and education community," according to Internet2, a nonprofit consortium of universities, corporations, government agencies, laboratories and other institutions that develop breakthrough Internet technologies.

Burtner, a professor in the McIntire Department of Music in the College of Arts & Sciences and collaborator Scott Deal, a musician and professor at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis, won for Auksalaq: a Telematic Opera.

September 2011

UVA Today, Fish Sculptures Make a Splash at U.Va.'s Runk Dining Hall, September 27, 2011, by Jane Ford

The University of Virginia's Runk Dining Hall has been overrun by fish. A school of 14 fish sculptures, constructed largely out of found materials, have turned this on-Grounds eatery into an art gallery.

Nancy Takahashi, who chairs of the School of Architecture's Department of Landscape Architecture and is principal of Hereford Residential College, discovered artist Dan Webster's creations during a chance meeting with his daughter, who works in catering services. Takahashi recognized the dining hall as having potential as a venue to display art by students and members of the community, and when she saw Webster's work, she thought it would fit the setting and be received well by students.

UVA Today, Virginia Film Festival Announces Return of Adrenaline Film Project, September 26, 2011, by John Kelly

The Adrenaline Film Project, a Virginia Film Festival staple since 2004, will make its eighth heart-racing return this year for four days of highly caffeinated fun.

The Virginia Film Festival, Nov. 3-6, is presented by the University of Virginia's College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Each year, the Adrenaline Film Project gives teams of filmmakers the chance to write, cast, shoot, edit and screen an original short film in just 72 hours.

UVA Today, Leonardo and Art and Science in the Renaissance Is Focus of U.Va. Institute, September 26, 2011, by Jane Ford

The original Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci's intellectual interests and works are imbued with curiosity and imagination that highlight his interest in art and science.

"Leonardo da Vinci: Between Art and Science," a three-week University of Virginia institute to be held June 25 through July 13 in Florence, Italy, will focus on art and science in the Renaissance. The institute is funded by a $200,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

"The institute recognizes the growing international role of the University," said art history professor Francesca Fiorani of U.Va.'s College of Arts & Sciences, who will direct the endeavor.

UVA Today, Drama Opens Season with Tony Award-winning Parade, September 23, 2011, by Jane Ford

The 2011-12 University of Virginia Drama Department season kicks off with the epic American musical "Parade." Directed by College of Arts & Sciences drama professor Robert Chapel, the production will be presented in the Culbreth Theatre from Oct. 6-8 and 12-15 at 8 p.m.

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Alfred Uhry, (whose other works include "Driving Miss Daisy") with music from Jason Robert Brown, one of the most acclaimed composers on the contemporary theater scene, this Tony Award-winning musical tells the story of one of the most infamous trials of the 20th century.

UVA Today, U.Va. Is Remote Host Partner for Creative Time Summit on Sept. 23, September 20, 2011, by Jane Ford

The University of Virginia is a remote screening partner for the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference that brings together artists, curators, writers and thinkers to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. The more than 30 summit participants are socially engaged artists from around the world whose work blurs the lines between art and everyday life, emphasizing participation, dialogue and community engagement.

As part of the new Arts in Action on Grounds initiative, U.Va. is one of nine universities and art spaces around the world to host a remote screening of the Creative Time Summit on Sept. 23 in three sessions throughout the day. The event is free and open to the public. Attendees are welcome to drop in on any session in full or part.

UVA Today, Music Professor Helps Build Bridges Between Area Youngsters, U.Va., September 20, 2011, by Rob Seal

Though it's less than a mile from the Westhaven neighborhood to the University of Virginia's Lawn, many of the children who live there have never set foot on Grounds, even for a student play or free concert, according to professor Bonnie Gordon.

"People talk a lot about the achievement gap, which is very real, but even in a place like Charlottesville there can also be a big gap in terms of what cultural experiences children have," she said.

UVA Today, Symposium in Conjunction with 'Variety, Archaeology and Ornament' Exhibit To Be Held at U.Va. Sept. 30-Oct. 1, September 19, 2011, by Ellen Cathey

"Variety, Archaeology and Ornament: Architectural Prints from Column to Cornice," a symposium being held in conjunction with an exhibit at the University of Virginia Art Museum, will begin Sept. 30.

The exhibit is curated by Cammy Brothers, Mario di Valmarana Professor at the School of Architecture, and 2007 alumnus Michael Waters.

Focusing on the crucial role of prints in the transition from manuscript to printed architectural treatises during the Renaissance, "Variety, Archeology and Ornament: Renaissance Architectural Prints from Column to Cornice" re-evaluates the role of ornament, primarily through a series of architectural prints that played a conspicuous role in determining the concept of the five orders of architecture between about 1515 and 1550.

UVA Today, Group Sculpture Exhibit 'Touched by Virginia' Opens at U.Va's Ruffin Gallery Sept. 30, September 15, 2011, by Jane Ford

Recent sculpture, installations, sculptural photographs and video works by University of Virginia alumni artists and others who have spent their formative years in the University's sculpture community will be on display in "Touched by Virginia" in the McIntire Department of Art's Ruffin Gallery from Sept. 30 to Oct. 22. The gallery is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 1 to 5 p.m.

n opening reception will be held Sept. 30, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., and will be preceded at 4:30 p.m. by brief gallery talks by the 10 artists whose work is exhibited.

The artists are Golnar Adili, Britta Bielak, Jonathan Durham, Rosemarie Fiore, Judith Leemann, Maya Mackrandilal, Ashley Williams and Adam Wolpa, all of whom are U.Va. studio art alumni and Aunspaugh Fifth-Year Fellows; Firat Erdim, who was a post-doctoral fellow in the School of Architecture; and Eric Schmidt, a studio art gallery and studio technician who received a bachelor's degree in painting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has attended advanced sculpture classes at U.Va.

UVA Today, Faculty, Students Invited to Propose Collaborative Projects for New Arts Grant, September 8, 2011, by Jane Ford

Teams of University of Virginia students and faculty from multiple schools or departments are invited to submit proposals for an "Arts in Action Project Grant," one of the four components of the newly announced Arts in Action on Grounds initiative.

Arts in Action on Grounds is a public arts initiative designed to engage students and faculty in academic, arts-based research and to support the development of an arts-informed curriculum.

The grant, which will fund an annual collaborative public art project, is open to teams composed of any combination of U.Va. faculty and students. The funded project could take the form of a performance or exhibition through visual art, music, dance, drama, media arts or multi-disciplinary arts. It is also meant to highlight faculty research and to encourage the creation of new work that engages a University-wide audience. Proposals will be vetted through a peer-review process organized by the Arts Grounds Committee.

UVA Today, Arts in Action on Grounds Initiative Seeks to Raise Profile of Public Arts, September 7, 2011, by Jane Ford

Arts in Action on Grounds, a new public arts initiative at the University of Virginia, will bring artists who have achieved excellence in their fields and modern master works to Grounds to engage students and faculty in academic, arts-based research and to support the development of an arts-informed curriculum.

The two-year initiative, led by the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts, is funded by the Commission on the Future of the University.

"This money will allow us to develop the culture for the arts at U.Va. as we move to a new level of interaction and engagement with artists, both inside and outside the University," Elizabeth Hutton Turner, vice provost for the arts, said. "By providing resources for faculty research and increasing the connections with the arts University-wide, this money will highlight the arts in the teaching and research mission of U.Va.

UVA Today, Amid Pomp and Circumstance, University Dedicates Hunter Smith Band Building, September 6, 2011, by Rob Seal

Cavalier Marching Band director William Pease had meticulously checked every detail of the new Hunter Smith Band Building prior to its dedication ceremony Friday at the University of Virginia. But he was still surprised by a late addition to the state-of-the-art facility.

During his remarks, Leonard W. Sandridge, recently retired executive vice president and chief operating officer, asked Pease and Hunter Smith to unveil a plaque, and Pease received an unexpected honor: The room in which the dedication was held was named the "William E. Pease Band Room," a move that garnered a standing ovation from current and former band members and other representatives of the U.Va. community.

The Newsplex, UVa Marching Band Gets New Home, September 1, 2011

The University of Virginia has unveiled its newest building. The Hunter Smith Band Building was dedicated at a ceremony Friday afternoon in Charlottesville.

The state-of-the-art $12.7 million facility sits on Culbreth Road. It contains three levels of rehearsal halls, practice rooms, instrument and uniform storage and offices. It will house the University’s Cavalier Marching Band, which does not have a dedicated practice facility, as well as the men's and women's basketball bands, the bands for the olympic sports, the wind ensemble, and the concert band.

August 2011

The New York Observer, Jennifer Farrell Named Curator of Exhibitions at the University of Virginia Art Museum, August 30, 2011, by Andrew Russeth

The University of Virginia Art Museum has tapped scholar and curator Jennifer Farrell, who has a long history of working at institutions throughout New York and New England, to be its new curator of exhibitions.

Ms. Farrell comes to the museum from the New York-based Nancy Graves Foundation, which maintains the archive of the late sculptor and painter Nancy Graves and makes grants to artists.

UVA Today, U.Va. Music Professor Ted Coffey Collaborates with Bill T. Jones in 'Story/Time', August 30, 2011, by Rob Seal

A University of Virginia music professor is composing and performing the music for an ambitious new performance piece by noted choreographer and artist Bill T. Jones.

Ted Coffey, an associate music professor in U.Va.'s College of Arts & Sciences, is currently rehearsing for the January debut of "Story/Time," a stage performance by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company inspired by artist and composer John Cage's 1958 work "Indeterminacy."

UVA Today, U.Va. Arts Board Selects Visual Artist Tom Burckhardt for 2011-12 Residency, August 30, 2011, by Jane Ford

The student-run University of Virginia Arts Board has selected New York visual artist Tom Burckhardt as this year's visiting artist.

Each year, the board selects an outstanding artist, attraction, performance or exhibition to visit the Grounds and work closely with the arts community. The selection rotates among music, the visual arts and drama.

UVA Today, University to Dedicate Hunter Smith Band Building Friday, August 29, 2011, by Jane Kelly

The University of Virginia will host a dedication ceremony Friday for the new state-of-the-art Hunter Smith Band Building.

Friday's ceremony begins at 4:30 p.m. and will include remarks from University President Teresa Sullivan, Dean Meredith Woo of the College of Arts & Sciences, Rector Helen Dragas, band director Bill Pease and former Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Leonard Sandridge. It will include an unveiling of a plaque for the building and a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

UVA Today, U.Va. Art Museum Selects Jennifer Farrell as Curator of Exhibitions, August 29, 2011, by Jane Kelly

Jennifer Farrell, whose scholarly research, writing, foundation and curatorial work focuses on modern and contemporary art, joined the University of Virginia Art Museum staff Aug. 15 as curator of exhibitions. She will be in charge of developing in-house exhibitions, working with outside curators to formulate future projects and advising on museum purchases, among other duties.

Farrell brings a depth of experience working with museums, galleries and foundations to further their exhibition, publication and outreach efforts.

UVA Today, Michael Slon Named Interim Music Director for The Oratorio Society of Virginia, August 23, 2011, by Dory Hulse

Michael Slon, a professor on the music faculty in the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences and conductor of the University Singers and Chamber Singers, will serve as interim music director for The Oratorio Society of Virginia for the upcoming season.

Slon will lead the chorus while it searches for a permanent music director to be named for the 2012-13 season.

The New York Times, You Must Remember This, August 18, 2011, by Holland Cotter

Kevin Jerome Everson's short films about ordinary African-American life are completely unordinary. Yet despite their frequent appearance in film festivals and on museum film programs, they have yet to sink fully into art world consciousness. Even when Mr. Everson's striking seven-minute "Emergency Needs" was in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, it was sidelined, as biennial films often are, by the objects in the galleries.

As if to make up for this, the museum has organized a small solo show called "More Than That: Films by Kevin Jerome Everson," made up of 17 brief films (technically, films transferred to video) projected on four walls of a screening room. Some of the films seem to be purely archival and topical, others simply and casually anecdotal, though as one quickly learns, “pure,” “simple” and “casual” are not words in Mr. Everson’s aesthetic vocabulary.

UVA Today, U.Va. Graduate Art History Students Curate Exhibit and Critique the Work of Emerging Artists, August 8, 2011, by Jane Ford

Untitled is a traveling exhibition organized and curated by University of Virginia art history doctoral student Michael Maizels and May graduate Brittany Strupp that pairs up-and-coming artists from the Mid-Atlantic with emerging scholars, critics and curators.

July 2011

UVA Today, Mountain Lake Station Inspires Summer Art Students and Collaboration Between Disciplines, July 28, 2011, by Jane Ford

Nature has been the muse of artists for centuries. Students in Megan Marlatt's summer class are learning firsthand how powerful that inspiration is.

Marlatt, a University of Virginia studio art professor, designed the course, "Beginning Drawing I and II: The Landscape, Small and Large," as an intensive immersion into the study of art through nature. The six students in the pilot session are spending two weeks at the University's Mountain Lake Biological Station in the hardwood forest of the Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia, exploring the station's rich collection of insects, skulls, bones, stuffed animals and living specimens in the surrounding landscape.

East City Art Reviews, "Untitled" at Industry Gallery, July 14, 2011, by Eric Hope

Currently on display at Industry Gallery through August 13, 2011 is Untitled, a traveling exhibition featuring works from eight regional MFA graduates. Industry Gallery, known more for its display of conceptual, sometimes avant-garde, furniture-cum-sculpture is hosting this exhibition concurrently with Conner Contemporary’s annual Academy exhibition which also showcases some of the best emerging artists in the DC region.

Untitled provides a unique twist to the traditional gallery exhibition by uniting these up-and-coming artists with emerging scholars and curators. While art is certainly front and center, the scholarly critiques and research in the show’s accompanying catalog add a rich depth of perspective akin to what one might glean from museum show. Mike Maizels and Brittany Strupp, the show’s co-curators from the University of Virginia, realized that while early-career artists have increasing opportunities to engage gallerists and patrons, emerging art scholars and curators often have more limited contact with their artistic peers (“most of us [usually] work with dead artists,” Ms. Strupp notes wryly).

May 2011

Daily Progress, Stephen Colbert, wife donate to UVa fine-arts fund, May 4, 2011, by Staff Reporters

A gift from Stephen Colbert and his wife, Evelyn McGee Colbert, will go to help underwrite the studies of fine-arts students at the University of Virginia, the university announced Wednesday.

Evelyn Colbert is a 1985 UVa graduate. Stephen Colbert is the facetiously right-wing host of a late-night talk show on Comedy Central. Their gift will help support the expansion of an existing program to create a cadre of elite artists called College Arts Scholars.

February 2011

The Hook, Southern (dis)comfort: Photographers expose their roots, February 21, 2011, by Laura Parsons

“You don’t have a southern bone in your body,” a friend recently remarked. She meant it as a compliment, but the truth is I consider myself quintessentially southern. I was born in Lexington, to parents who were both native Virginians, and although I don’t identify with bigots, moonshiners, or those who pine for the Confederacy, I do love storytelling and the melancholia of faded beauty.

The South is fundamental to my identity, just as it is for the six artists with work in the UVA Art Museum’s exhibition, “Southern Views/Southern Photographers.” Each contributor offers a distinct aesthetic, but what Shelby Lee Adams, William Christenberry, Emmet Gowin, Sally Mann, Pamela Pecchio, and Jeff Whetstone share is a sense of place and a nostalgic impulse that finds beauty in the not-always-pretty way history— both personal and impersonal— unfolds.

December 2010

The Hook, The 2010 visual vault, December 23, 2010, by Laura Parsons

Despite an economic climate that challenged both art practitioners and purveyors, the Charlottesville art scene made several memorable leaps in 2010.

Man, oh, Man Ray: In late August, the University of Virginia Art Museum made another impressive showing by hosting the traveling exhibit, "Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens," which examined how Man Ray's photographs of African sculpture shifted it from being regarded as anthropological evidence to being considered fine art. Numerous lectures and a film series augmented the rich and informative main exhibition, which included not only images by Man Ray and his contemporaries but also the objects they photographed.”

November 2010

Richmond Times-Disptach, TechnoSonics XI: Mediated Nature Series looks at nature, art, November 12, 2010, by Daily Progress Staff Reports

TechnoSonics XI: Mediated Nature, which starts Wednesday at the University of Virginia, will feature cutting-edge acoustic and electronic music, multimedia performances and multidisciplinary approaches to sound.

The Mediated Nature theme will explore ways in which nature informs, inspires and translates into creative work. Starting Wednesday, there will be a variety of sound walks and installations.

September 2010

Daily Progress, Ray of Light, September 21, 2010, by David Maurer

The horrific bloodletting of World War I helped ignite fires of artist expression that continue to impact human sensibilities to this day.

From the ghastly ferment arose literary voices such as those of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. And at the vanguard of the visual arts was Emmanuel Radnitzky — known to the world as Man Ray.

The contributions of this American artist, who spent much of his career in Paris, have become increasingly appreciated since his death in 1976. Before the start of the new millennium, ARTnews, the oldest and most widely circulated art-related magazine in the world, listed Man Ray among its top 25 most influential artists of the 20th century.

Although the Philadelphia-born artist thought of himself primarily as a painter, he also was an exceptional fashion and portrait photographer. This latter pursuit is the focus of the University of Virginia Art Museum’s major exhibit, “Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens.”

Daily Progress, Celebrating Chopin, September 17, 2010, by Jane Norris

Why limit a birthday celebration to a single day when you can pack a whole weekend with events?

Fans of Polish-French pianist and composer Frederic Chopin, who was born in 1810, can learn more about the man and the music he loved while the Chopin Bicentennial Celebration continues at the University of Virginia.

The collection of events, which began Sept. 16, is presented by the McIntire Department of Music in collaboration with the Center for Russian and East European Studies.

The Hook, Colorful vocabulary: Baines abstracts the drama, September 5, 2010, by Laura Parsons

"These shouldn't work" was my first thought while standing in Ruffin Gallery looking at Katie Baines's recent paintings. A visiting faculty member in UVA's art department, Baines creates shape-strewn abstracts, combining numerous techniques from airbrushing to stenciling to brushwork, in colors that would normally clash but somehow mesh. And work, they do.

The best approach, I discovered, is simply to yield, allowing each of the 10 acrylic-on-panel paintings to unfold. After a few minutes, Baines' visual vocabulary begins to make sense. From piece to piece, she deploys a similar set of elements-- thin parallel lines fluid in their irregularity, waving polyps, scalloped borders, stenciled shapes and their echoes, etc.-- that unite her complex compositions and move the viewer smoothly from one small event to the next.

August 2010

Cville, The Bayly looks at African art through Man Ray's lens, August 2010, by Andrew Cedermark

...it was move-in day at UVA, and students rode past the Bayly Building in the backs of pickup trucks, beside their mattresses and couches. Theirs was a trip into the heart of darkness worthy of a new exhibit at the UVA Art Museum, “Man Ray: African Art and the Modernist Lens,” which was celebrated with a low-key three hour community event dubbed Man Ray Day.

March 2010

The Daily Progress, A moving lesson in freedom of expression, March 22, 2010

...axis: all about access
The University of Virginia Dance Program and Department of Drama have join forces to host AXIS Dance Company this week for a series of master classes, student demonstrations and a public performance at the Paramount Theater.

According to artistic director Judith Smith, physically challenged performers are just one part of the AXIS equation.

“We are as much about non-disability as we are about disability. It is not just about the disabled dancers, it is about the fact that we can do what we do because both components are represented.”